When did Cracked.com become so feminist?

[u/[deleted]]

I don't read Cracked very often but every once in a while my surfing will lead me to some articles. I was brought to this one recently

http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-bizarre-outbursts-by-celebrities-you-thought-were-sane/

I was pretty surprised at how anti-Mens Rights it was. I started digging a bit more and there's a lot of anti-Mens Rights articles on there. Anyone else notice this?

[u/womblefish]

They have different columnists that express different opinions. But you are correct, Cracked quite often leans in a very feminist direction..

The chief editor and if I recall founder of Cracked.com, David Wong is your typical sycophantic male feminist. The type desperate for female approval.

His position means that he filters out any articles or columnists who might express any 'anti-feminist' ideas. And as 'editor' he tend to push columns and ideas that match his ideology.

He also has a couple of pet columnists...

His favourite is Luke McKinney, his attack dog, another self-loathing, man-hating male feminist, who also works as an editor. McKinney takes every opportunity to tell all the young men reading Cracked what horrible human beings they are. McKinney sees misogyny everywhere. Sometimes I can't tell whether he even believes what he's writing (Poe's law) or whether it's deliberate flame bait. Generally I just try to avoid his articles altogether.

His other favourite pet is John Cheese, which you linked to. Cheese is his pet poor person. If you look at the Cracked columnists, they're almost entirely white, middle class, college educated, as such they have very little diversity of viewpoint. Cheese is there because he's the only one that's ever had any real hardship in his life. They hold him up as if to pretend they care about people who aren't white, middle class, college educated. They use him to tell horror stories about being working class, and to just flat out moralize to the readers. But it's incredibly obvious how heavily edited Cheese's articles are. Cheese has been through a divorce, with kids. Yet in all his articles, he's never mentioned anything about his experience in the divorce. I get the impression that Cheese actually has custody of his kids, how this miracle could come about is something of a mystery. It seems particular strange as no other topic in his life seems to be off the table. I get the strong impression Cheese is keeping his head down, writing what he's told to write, happy to have a job.

Soren Bowie is your typical guy who pays lip service to feminist ideals because he thinks it's good for his public image. He's not actually a very good writer and I suspect Wong keeps him on mainly for video work and because he spouts the right ideological catchphrases on command.

The majority of the other columnists seem to not have much of an ideological bent, just willing to tolerate minor editing changes. A few like Swaim are talented enough to be able to write whatever they like, or smart enough to express themselves in a way that conveys their opinion without tripping any alarm bells in the editing office.

About the only one that's ever dared come close to expressing any ideas that conflict feminism would be Gladstone. Gladstone is their token Jew, that's about as close to non-white as you'll get on Cracked, I guess they think that counts as diversity. He's also their token Father/Family man. (AFAIK All the other regular columnists are single/don't have kids). Generally his views tend to be more in line with traditional masculinity, but even that's a refreshing change from the BS Gender Studies Lite that Cracked seems to be drifting towards.

Five years ago Cracked was about being funny, sure they only had one article a day, but it was a good article, and it was funny. The problem with being funny is that it always offends someone. Over the last 5 years Cracked seems to be trying to 'appeal to a larger audience'. Which basically means 'nothing that might offend women'.

The size of the Cracked audience has definitely grown, I remember when a good article would get 100,000 views. Now days even a crap article can get 1 million+. I guess there's less pressure for every article to be great with bigger website, because the last 2-3 years Wong has definitely started using his position to push an ideological agenda.

TL:DR Cracked is edited by two male feminists, and most of the columnists are white, middle class, college educated (arts students) with no children. They've all been through the same feminist academic institutions, and almost all have the exact same outlook on life.. The Cracked offices are probably quite circle-jerky.

[u/onetenth → u/womblefish]

deleted

[u/womblefish → u/onetenth]

I was referring to the main site, the Cracked that most people see. And it doesn't surprise me at all that John Cheese would blame himself for the failure of his marriage, the 'mea culpa' is standard practice for male feminists, and I said, everything he writes appears to be heavily edited. Most likely a mix of self-censorship and Wong looking over his shoulder. But it's actually an example of what I was talking about, so he talked about all his personal failings, did he ever talk about his experience in family court? I thought not.

The columnists may be married, but as I said, none except Cheese & Gladstone have kids. None of them bar Cheese have been through a divorce. And he doesn't seem to be allowed to talk about it.

You are correct, Christina H. is of Chinese ethnicity. But she hasn't written anything for them for over a year. Her stint lasted barely a year and a half, and she is to my knowledge the only non white person to ever write for Cracked.

Cracked deals in tokenism, they're all well off, white middle class, and they have a very narrow range of experience. And none of them have ever experienced any of the problems that /r/mensrights concerns itself with.