I friggin' love Cracked.com.

[TheWraith]

"The original quantum touch therapy consists of imagining colors and focusing on body parts. That's it. That's the entire therapy. The book jacket is lined with gushing testimonials from those who have been Quantumly touched, about how much supercharging things enhanced their incredibly gullible lives.

Considering that these are people who believed the first book which said "think about the color red and you'll feel good," a book that asks you to "think about the color red harder and you'll feel EVEN BETTER" didn't have to deliver much.

Hard scientific evidence is provided by the fact that thinking about silver can provide the same benefits as colloidal silver. Obviously the "it's the same color so it should do the same thing" school of medicine isn't very popular, but that's just because Big Pharma doesn't want the little man to know that a bag of Skittles can cure AIDS.

Add the fact that colloidal silver has slightly fewer medical benefits than punching yourself in the face and you've got a treatment so many levels removed from reality there's a genuine risk it could be run over by Superman riding a unicorn on his way to meet a reasonable political blogger."

http://www.cracked.com/article_15959_5-books-that-can-actually-make-you-stupider.html

[realisticphish]

1. I really wonder

if their editors have a major skeptical contingent. Because they do a LOT of articles with either skeptical tones, or outright skeptical declarations

[TZ]

2. Possibly

Seems like they specialize in smart ass sardonic irreverant humor- and for some reason, many skeptics I know seem to love that kind of snark. - up to and including me. Us boring scientists do luvs us a good laugh from time to time

[Dr. Strange]

3. Here's their description of what they look for...

Crucial Cracked Writing Tips

1. The Article Must Be Based Around Real Information.

Feature articles are not like the columns; our columns are writers writing pieces based on their own personality or a fictional character they've created for the purpose of the column. A feature article is more fact-based. It's accumulating real but bizarre/outrageous/ridiculous/ironic facts.

So this doesn't have to be about 16th Century poets. It can be entertainment trivia, interesting tidbits... as long as they're real.

When writing, I actually don't sit down with a list of jokes or funny lines. I just think of a topic I want to write about, then add the jokes later (IT IS IMPORTANT THAT YOU NOT SKIP THIS STEP-we're still a comedy website).

That's the formula for success. People get a little, heroin-like high from learning something new. So what do you know? Are you big on comic book trivia? The movie business? Follow the games industry? Are you an encyclopedia of 80's sitcom characters? Pro wrestling? Nascar?

Write on those subjects, then. You can get as retarded as you want with the jokes, but at Cracked, we're always writing around a kernel of actual interesting shit. THAT is what people want right now.

2. The more you work on the article, the less chance we're going to edit the shit out of it.

Take your time. Give the thing a second day, sleep on it. If it just doesn't feel right, set it aside and come back to it. Even if you need the money right away, it's still to your benefit to put your best article forward.

We're not asking you to suddenly be a polished comedy machine. But if you're like me, you want your piece to survive as intact as possible. The key to that is to make sure it's as good as you can get it.

3. Don't be discouraged by rejection.

That's bullshit advice because that's an emotional reaction you can't control, I understand that. But just keep in mind that the only reason I'm able to do what I do, is because I got rejected in the past. You WILL have to go through that process.

You're not a mind reader. You're not going to understand exactly what CRACKED wants from you. That's one reason I set up this area of the forums, so you could get that feedback from the gang rather than suffer the sting of getting your article idea back with a huge red proverbial "REJECTED" stamp on it.

4. Don't use "I" or "me" in the articles.

All CRACKED feature articles are written as "we." As in, "we here at CRACKED." Leave personal anecdotes out of it. So never say, "I was baffled by the Sopranos finale." Always, "We were baffled."

Now the columnists can do it, because they each are writing under their own personalities (with their picture at the top so they're recognizable) but there is really no other way to do it with our feature article process (that is, running articles from literally dozens of strangers).

Otherwise you create all sorts of confusion and conflicts for the new readers. If we have an article that Ian Fortey wrote and he goes ahead and just writes it as himself, with "So I got off the plane from visiting my sister in Montana yesterday. You know what I fucking hate about Montana..."

The reader is like, who is this guy? Is he the site's owner? Are all the articles written by him? Is "Cracked.com" just what he's named his personal blog? It'd be baffling for somebody once they realize we may have 18 different writers in a month.

5. Don't let the fact-based articles limit your imagination

Lots of writers complain about us not taking satire and parody, because that's some of the most popular forms of comedy for the writers, it's a ton of fun (I've done a ton of it myself). It's just never worked very well at Cracked. But the good news is you can do the same jokes, they just have to be phrased differently.

So, if you want to make the point that Scientology is ridiculous, satire would be writing an article called:

Tom Cruise reveals he is the evil lord Xenu.

Then you make the joke that Tom Cruise is secretly Xenu, sent to earth to make Scientology look bad.

On Cracked you would need to frame it as:

The Most Unintentionally Ridiculous Celebrity Religions.

Then you make the joke that it's as if Tom Cruise is secretly Xenu, sent to earth to make Scientology look bad.

The important thing is YOU GET TO MAKE THE EXACT SAME POINTS AND THE EXACT SAME JOKES. It's just a more straightforward method of doing it. The jokes and references can be as obscure and detailed as you want, it's just that the point needs to be clear in the headline of the article rather than hiding the point behind a layer of satire in the headline.

6. You're not just listing, you're observing something about the world.

This is what separates a Cracked list from the lists you see in Entertainment Weekly or Cosmo. We're not counting down the 10 Most Kickass Action Heroes Ever. Anybody can do that, that's just listing. No, we're counting down 6 Action Heroes Who Should be Convicted of Murder, and deconstructing these action scenes and pointing out how grossly negligent they were when it comes to innocent bystanders. Everything has that little twist that makes it different from what you would see elsewhere, such as:

6 Insane Cults (that would probably be a lot of fun)

6 Endangered Species That Aren't Endangered Enough

The 6 Cutest Animals That Can Still Destroy You.

Do you see how each promises the reader they're going to learn something new/surprising/unexpected? That's always what you're going for.

I think the kind of thing they look for is just naturally set up for skeptical observations.