I’m on Cracked!

Holy flying shitballs, Cthulhu, it’s happened at last! I am on Cracked, baby.

Cracked.com has been my favourite humour site for as long as I’ve had a favourite humour site. If you’ve never heard of Cracked…then you’re dead to me! Unless, of course, you really are dead, in which case I’m sorry – what a dick move to disrespect your permanent condition, right?

Cracked are known for fact-based lists of surprising trivia written with a generous sprinkling of juvenile humour. I’ve been reading Cracked regularly for years and many of my list-style posts are inspired by them.

The awesome thing about Cracked is that anybody can write for them…at least in theory. The site has extremely high requirements for what types of lists are accepted. There are a few full-time columnists on Cracked who are free to write opinion pieces, but they’re the exception. All external freelancers have to meet specific and strict criteria. For example:

  • The list has to be grounded in fact and based on data from reputable sources. You can’t just write about the “6 Types of Unicorns Best Suited for Tap Dancing”, as awesome as that may sound. Nor can you write about “5 Types of Poison the Government is Adding to our Water Supply”, found on some lunatic’s blog.
  • The list must have a “twist” or a counter-intuitive element. For example “5 Great Metal Bands” wouldn’t be interesting, while “5 Metal Bands That Are Secretly Just One Person with a Banjo” would be.

I’ve been thinking about pitching an article to Cracked for almost two years. It made perfect sense since our sites are practically twins. I write humour, Cracked writes humour. My blog is read by 2 people and a Google bot, Cracked gets millions of views a day. See? Twins.

Colourful Crowd

Millions! Just like here! I suck at counting!

In early March I began what would turn out to be a month long process of pitching my first article. Countless hours and dozens of discarded entries later my pitch was finally accepted. It was written and submitted in mid April, but due to the long pipeline of articles that Cracked operates with it was only published yesterday…

…and my mind exploded. To see my article on the front page of Cracked was like seeing my…article…on the front page of Cracked. It’s exactly this kind of eloquence that won Cracked over.

I’m happy, is what I’m trying to say. Could have just said that and spared all of us this awkwardness.

The article has been edited quite a bit, so I’d say the end product is approximately a 50/50 split between myself and the Cracked editors. Article and heading titles, pictures and their often hilarious captions are all from Cracked editors, because that’s their area of expertise.

The article is doing very well and within 24 hours has been seen by ten times more people than have ever seen my blog. This realisation, of course, marks the beginning of a depression from which I will never recover.

Oh yeah…if you want to actually read the article in question, here it is: “5 Emergency Cures Everyone Knows (That Actually Hurt You)“, aka “5 Myths About Curing Common Injuries (You Probably Believe)”

A very special thanks goes to Carrie Rubin, who helped with my research on the hyperventilation entry, which unfortunately was one of many that didn’t make the final cut.

32 thoughts on “I’m on Cracked!”

  3. That was amazing! Congrats on your increasing notoriety! I’ll have to remember to ask for your autograph before you become unreachable. Honestly, good article. Hey, any chance I can get to read the cut parts of the article, too? Or were you planning to post them in a ‘these didn’t make it’ kind of post?

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    • Thanks Ella, means a lot coming from an editor and author.

      As for the cut parts, there are two types – there are whole entries that were rejected during pitching process. I’m waiting for Cracked’s permission on running those on my blog and if I get it I’ll make a separate post with them.

      Then there are cut parts that belonged to the published entries, but were changed/taken out/replaced by editors in the final article version. If you’re interested in those I could send them, but I believe the editors did a fantastic job of cutting out my long-winded-ish intros and getting to the subject matter faster.

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  9. Congratulations, Daniel! That’s quite an accomplishment. Lots of comments over there. I suppose now that you’ve hit the big time, I’ll have to call you Sir Daniel?…

    Thanks for the mention, by the way. 🙂

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    • Thanks Carrie, it is. It’s a minor dream come true. Comments are not as much thanks to me but due to Cracked’s massive established audience. Although it was nice to read a lot of positive feedback there.

      No worries about the mention, I appreciate you helping out.

      And please, “Sir Daniel”?! You think just because I’m on Cracked I’m pompous enough to ask for that? A simple “your majesty sir Duke” will suffice.

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  10. On Cracked! Well done indeed! 🙂

    I’ve stepped beyond my, “never leave a smiley in a comment to another dude” rule, because in this case, it’s well deserved! Also, apparently 3 exclamation marks.

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    • Rules are meant to be spit on and kicked in the nuts. I may be mixing some words up. Thanks Ken, it’s a huge step for me and still a bit surreal. Haven’t visited your blog in a while, but hope all is well on your end!

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  13. Congratulations! Cracked never fails to make me chuckle, and my nephew’s a big fan. Off to tell him I know the guy who writes Cracked articles!

    Well, one Cracked article. And I don’t really know the guy, I just kinda lurk creepily on his blog… Eh, never mind.

    Congratulations anyway. 😉

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