4 core requirements you must meet if you want to write for Cracked.com

Cracked.com is a humor website that relies on its readers to supply it with content. That means you, the one reading this, can be published and have your work seen by millions! Here are four tips for the aspiring Cracker to help you along your path to Crackdom.

4. Hate everything.

Every Cracked.com article is based upon the timeless paradigm of objectivity and condescending commentary. Appear as the candid observer, making note of any hypocrisy, shortcoming, or other weakness that is evident in the subject. Any tone of optimism or sympathy should be avoided at all costs, even if it means deflecting from possible holes in your argument with shameless profanity, crudeness, or ad homenim and straw-man attacks. Your goal as a Cracked.com contributor is to instill seething, festering hatred into the minds of your readers. Write with the intent to shock and offend. Slurs, profanity. cruelty, stereotypes, and otherwise pejorative phrases are an essential part of any Cracked.com article.

Images such as this are indispensable because of their extreme,

attention-catching, and offensive nature.

Never ever actively take a stand on a subject; your position should be entirely reactionary. Presenting an argument that is not predicated upon another's wrongness sets you up to be knocked down. Easily hate-able topics include religion, right-wing politics, concerned parents, and traditional morality. These topics are all great starting spots for the aspiring Cracked.com contributor.

3. Think simply.

According to the Cracked.com philosophy, any topic, no matter how complex it may be, is reducible into short, numbered lists. All information must fit into this rigid journalistic format:

Title: Number/ adjective/ subject noun/ nominative/ auxiliary verb /verb

Introduction/ broad generalization

Claim #3

Picture #3

---

Claim #2

Picture #2

---

Claim #1

Picture #1

...(and so on)

Profanity

2. Sound smart.

Portmanteaus, gerunds, allusions, jargon, and big words in general are all benefactors to your soon-to-be Cracked.com article. Aristotle knew what he was talking about when he proclaimed that logos (logic) was an indispensable part of a sound argument. Now, I can sense some of you are worried that you may not be able to gather facts supporting your article when you know that a cornerstone of Crack-dom is misinformation and falsehood. Despair not! The Internet is so full of bad information, crackpot theories, convoluted data and overall garbage that there's sure to be at least a few facts that will support your argument!

"There's got to be some statistics connecting the Bush

Administration and obesity rates in here somewhere."

1. Be ironic.

Remember: the main goal of Cracked.com is to piss people off. This is not satire like The Onion or The Colbert Report. All those are specifically designed to make you laugh, then make you think. Cracked.com is designed to make you laugh, then make you form a lynch mob. Irony is the supreme method of circumventing arguments against your article; your goal as a writer is to piss people off by exposing fallacious arguments, by using fallacious arguments. Poke fun at this blatant conflict throughout the article. Addressing it yourself makes it sound like it's 'case closed', so any time somebody points it out, you can react like a hipster who's asked about Arcade Fire- "Yeah, I know (scowl)." The humor the irony brings to the article will blast it into the stratosphere of funny.

"Yeah, I heard about Arcade Fire winning a Grammy or whatever.

Now if you'll excuse me I have to repair the brakes on my fixie."