17 Ways Cracked.com is Selling Out

I’ll first say that I am a reader of Cracked.com, and some of the writing on there is top-notch. Hell, I was even the guy who preferred Cracked over Mad when I was a kid, to the ridicule of comic collectors everywhere. But after hopping on Cracked.com today, I just had enough. Sure, they’ve found success and what works for them, but it just seems that they’re running a good idea right into the ground.

Seriously guys, the “list” articles are really becoming a little cliche. A lot cliche actually. 17 of the 22 highlighted articles on the site today were lists of some sort. These 17 articles were:

5 Common Crime Fighting Tactics
6 Habits of Highly Annoying Public Speakers
4 TV Ads That Depict Terrifying Alternate Universes
The 8 Most Shameless Attempts to Cash in on 9/11
6 Laws You’ve Broken Without Even Realizing It
6 Images of Abandoned Weaponry You Won’t Believe Are Real
9 Self-Defense Gadgets Your Mugger Will Find Hilarious
6 Arcade Games Too Awesome to Get Released in the West
6 Parodies That Succeeded Because Nobody Got the Joke
18 Arts And Crafts Projects of Dangerous Psychopaths
17 Figures of Speech As Understood by a Five Year Old
5 Mind Blowing Things Crowds Do Better Than Experts
7 Terrible Sports Achievements (That Will Never Be Equaled)
5 Situations That Are Secretly Terrifying For Awkward People
5 Sci-Fi Technologies People Achieved By Hacking the Kinect
5 Ways You Know It’s Time to Get Married
The 6 Most Insane True Takes of Survival

And a partridge in a pear tree?

Is the point to put out witty humor, or to create nothing but lists because that’s what’s drawing traffic now? Have the writers forgotten that wit can exist outside of a list, or do they just following a formula that is working for now?

Dear Cracked.com,
You have a pretty big following who I’m sure would still appreciate you if every article wasn’t a list. Don’t be afraid. Let’s see the balls you showed when you took on Mad back in their heyday.
Thanks,
Waffles

As good as some of the writing on Cracked.com is, it’s time for the contributors to stop relying on the same hackneyed style for almost every article. For a site that promotes itself as innovately witty, their contributors now seem to fear doing anything outside of the box they’ve created for themselves. History is full of success stories… of those on top, who eventually fell hard because they found what worked and feared coloring outside of those lines.

Just ask Myspace, the Backstreet Boys, Blockbuster Video, and… Cracked.com?