11 Things I Learned from Writing 100 Cracked Articles

Man Comics and the Art of Being a Man

Man Comics is the official magazine of every STD clinic in Valhalla. For 11 issues, the innocence of Popsicle Pete, the wholesome values of Dick Whiskey: Drunk Cop, and the foresight of Spontaneo: The Dog Who Doesn't Give a Fuck have given us face-sexing adventures safe for young people that will ensure future generations don't grow up to be a bunch of whining pussies like mine.

Cinema and the Art of Homophobia

I like to write about movies; they're probably our culture's greatest shared experience. Why, if a man and a woman enjoy cinema enough, it might be years before they find out they've completely run out of things to talk about. Luckily, if that happens with me, I can hold up both ends of a Jean-Claude Van Damme discussion long past the natural lifespan of a human woman. I shared some of this enthusiasm in my first Cracked article on Jean-Claude Van Damme and then again in The Return of Jean-Claude Van Damme. I can sum them up if you're in a hurry: splits, balls.

The most rewarding and annoying part about writing jokes is watching people not get them and then react violently. I used the example of homophobia above, which I get called 25 to 100 times an article, even if I've used the word faggy in its purely scientific context. This is strange to me because none of my gay friends have ever called me that, and I'm constantly violating their social mores. For instance, I won't finger a waiter's butthole even if that's the polite way to order another round of mimosas when you have two or more gays at brunch. And the last time I was at the airport my own state senator left the bathroom telling me I have sex like a barely bi-curious virgin gorilla.

Everyone with a TV is an Idiot

I've found that every time I write an article about a TV show (See: 6 Ways to Fix Reality Dating Shows), many of the commenters are excited to show off the amazing degree to which they have no idea what the fuck I'm talking about. Do you know what it's like to work day and night putting together a hilarious article about something and hearing from your readers, "I READ THIS AND I DON'T KNOW WHAT ANY OF THESE THINGS ARE!" It's confusing and paradoxical. You see, to the remedially intellectual, television is something you're more ignorant for knowing more about. Which is a second paradox. Oh, and for the idiot television viewers, that word "paradox" means "when there are two Timecops."

There's some more readers I want to talk about, so let's get rid of them for a bit. Police Academy 3 came out before Police Academy 2 and 8 is the best one. That should keep them busy. Now my point: a serious problem with the Internet is that everyone thinks they're smarter than everyone else. And if you're writing an article about TV, everyone knows they're smarter than you. There's a weird phenomenon that when you're reading an article by someone whom you're sure is dumber than you, the jokes stop making sense. Sarcasm, irony-- it all just looks like insane errors. I'll give you an example from Comedy for the Deaf, one of my most polarizing articles: "I don't want to start a scandal, but if I was a TV executive and William Shatner gave my wife head lice, Shit My Dad Says is exactly how I would get my revenge."

We'll Never Learn Anything From Video Games

I've written a lot about video games (See: 6 Games Too Insane To Release or The Official Nintendo Seal Awards) in my career, but not because I like them. I'm in it for the girls, especially the nerdy porn stars. See figure 32D.

To be honest, that last one was the result of me playing Red Dead Redemption and hating women all week and desperately trying to spin 40 hours of wasted time into "research."

Comic Books Love Nerds

Now that we all live on a planet where everyone plays video games and grew up watching Star Wars, comic books are one of the few places you can go to still feel like a real nerd (See: Marvel Super Heroes RPG for Drunk Children. People like nerdy things because it reminds them of happier times when I had more time to myself and it was nothing to masturbate 8 times in a day. There's something about Old Comic Book Ads, Racist and Useless Sidekicks, and Badly Written Psychoses that take me back to an era when a boner seemed to always know the worst possible time to appear. For example: swimming lessons, piano recitals, and breast feeding.

Not all my comic articles have been about super heroes and adult situations. I once did an article where I built a robot specifically programmed to rewrite dipshit Family Circus cartoons to be funny under the strict MPAA guidelines for a PG-13 rating. It was probably the strangest, most over-complicated comedic hook I've ever used, and the perfect example of another thing that happens when you write jokes on the Internet: no matter how unique or original what you're doing is, people accuse you of stealing.The comments section of PG-13 Family Circus Rewritten By a Robot, again: the most absurd article concept ever, was filled with accusations that I plagiarized it from dozens of different websites. This came as quite a surprise to me after I'd been writing original jokes for the better part of two days, but it turns out the idea of replacing the words on a cartoon had already been invented. Now I get that the Internet is an incestuous Me-Too industry. 98% of it links back to the 1% making original content and the other 1% blatantly copying it. There's so much thievery going on that maybe these Internet nutbags can't even tell what's actual stealing anymore. But listen closely because the rest of this paragraph is being submitted for Pulitzer consideration: If you accuse me of plagiarism because my genius robot made fun of Family Circus and someone in 2002 added bad poop jokes to Marmaduke, I'm going to kick your mom's coughing vagina for having the same haircut as Osama Bin Laden.

Motherfuckin' America and The Importance of Kicking Ass

Fact: Nerds Hate Sports

I've found that nothing causes a nerd to lose interest faster than sports. And as everyone knows, when a nerd starts to lose interest, all that space where the interest was turns into rage. For instance, when I wrote this admittedly strange article about bad pedestrians entirely in NBA metaphors, many angry commenters informed me that it fell outside their area of interest and therefore had no place on Cracked. I heard the same thing in this article about Crazy Athletes. And while I thank these commenters for magically doing all that marketing research in their own heads, I'm worried they might have a dangerous condition originally discovered by corrections officers called "Too Rapeable."I've had three non-comedy jobs in my life: stunt man, pro wrestler, and UFC: Undisputed writer. I'm nerdy as shit, but I also think all men should live their life like they might need to break a 2x4 with any or every part of their body at any time. Kicking the fuck out of someone is the purest form of expression we have in this morally ambiguous society, and I try to share that joy with the world in articles like The Top 8 OH SHIT Moments in MMA, The 10 Worst MMA Fights, 7 Fighters Who Lied Their Way to Legendary, 10 Ragdoll KOs, The 6 Least Sportsmanlike Moments in MMA, The Ultimate Fighter Book of Josh Koscheck Insults, The 10 Ass Kickest Moments in Kickboxing, and Worst Life Ever: The Story of Kazuyuki Fujita's Skull. Oh, and remember earlier when I mentioned that people on the Internet accuse everyone of stealing things inappropriately? That Kazuyuki Fujita article is about actual events that took place on a human head and I got at least 200 hate mails saying that I stole it from an episode of "The Simpsons."

MMA isn't for everyone. In fact, once every 3 seconds someone observes that it's just two shirtless homosexuals hugging each other on the floor. Now I'm not in charge of defending combat against homosexuality critics, but I think a childlike observation without a joke degrades both jokes and children. So here's my solution: if you enjoy MMA and someone tells you that stuff's just gay fellas fuckin', take their cell phone and smash it. Because what are they going to do, fight you? That'd make them the gay! Call the cops? How? You just smashed their phone! And what are they going to tell AppleCare? "Sorry my phone broke, but when my friends are discussing sports I simply cannot stop bringing up gay sex." That completely voids an iPhone's warranty!

Understanding Women and Why You Totally Can't

A lot of my articles are based on the extensive research I've done in trying to understand women. I've played the The Ni***r N*g**r N**g*r N***er Dr. Laura Board Game, studied books on Fucking Like a Librarian, examined Every Religion's Sex Practices and looked at over 92,000 drawings of Kim Cattrall's mon pubis in 4 Sex Books for People Who Hate Sex. I've read so many books about sex that sometimes gynecologists send me pictures of weird fleshy things to see if they've discovered an unnamed vagina part.

At first, my only goal was to make some classy, highbrow jokes about these simple-minded authors, but soon I realized that most of these simple-minded authors were Gregory JP Godek. Now I have a new goal. I'm going to keep writing about this stupid fucker until all the Google results for his name are my jokes about his fat, pizza-filled wife. And in that tradition, you can avoid up to 280 calories of saturated fat if you dab Godek's wife with a napkin before making love.

I Don't Have the Same Taste in Music as Anybody

My favorite bands are Poison, Michael Jackson, and Milli Vanilli. When I go to Coachella I miss every act because if I don't keep drinking the sun boils away all my $12 beers before they can get me drunk. Plus, I only go to concerts in the first place if I'm dating a girl smart enough to see through my excuses to miss it. I seriously can't hold a conversation with anyone about music. Still, I wrote What are Your Top 5 Crime Scene Albums?, Su-Su-Science: Using Pandora as Phil Collins Gaydar, and The Numerically Bootiest Songs of All Time. I now see that We Are the World 2 was right about music being able to make a difference.

Reading Makes You Smarter, Unless You're at One of My Book Cases

Back when there were book stores, I used to love to shop in the self-help section. Unfortunately, I never found a book called How to Hide Your Laughter From the Emotionally Fragile Person Reading the Same Self-Help Book as You. Here's what I did find, though: 4 Supremely Depressing Books About Happiness and 24,504 Reasons to Burn Books. And since my dream book was never written, I wrote it myself: Gary Busey's 3rd Grade Science Textbook.

Mercy is for the Weak. The Stupid Deserve No Mercy

I mock the stupid, but that's only because I can be pretty stupid myself. For instance, I barely scored "not color blind" on these 6 IQ Tests Created by Complete Morons. I once spent almost 10 hours watching dog shows for an article I was going to call Eukanuba Nosferatu. I decided that every fifth person in the crowd at dog shows looked like a vampire. Eukanuba Nosferatu is something an idiot spirit shit in my brain, and it still holds the number one spot on my idea board (See Figure 34HHH). I write articles about how Mayonnaise Lies To Us or how Airlines Should Hire Pantied Bears as Stewardesses. And yet I'm constantly inventing new ways to mock my stupid brothers and sisters like suggesting Jobs for the Exceptionally Dumb or writing this article that I wasn't clever enough to figure out a category for. Real Talk.

In the past, people have suggested I'm a monster, and I don't always argue that. But normally I turn my hate on people who have some sort of success in life. If I say that Spencer Pratt is such a pussy that when he gets a haircut they charge him for a bikini wax, I know he can at least jerk off to the fact that someone typed his name. When I discredit every stupid book that Gregory JP Godek wrote, he can at least sit in his running car in his closed garage and intellectualize that thousands of people bought them. And for the opposite reason, I don't like to mess with people who write me hate mail-- because even if they hurt my delicate feelings, those poor angry children have nothing. What kind of man would I be if I used my Maxim-crushing wit against an unarmed child? Don't answer please, because I broke the rules of engagement on two different occasions: The Only 10 Angry Commenters To Ever Exist and When Scrapbookers Attack. Sometimes you have to tell haters which of their brothers' cocks they can suck.

Starting with The 24,504 Worst Pieces of Advice Ever Published, Sean's reviews of self-help literature exposed me to the dark underside of books I had always trusted to guide me through life. His The 10 Most Butt References in the History of Rap Music gave me the guidance I needed to carry on without them.

8 Douchebags Who Found This Article by Googling Themselves gave me an epiphany. I realized that the sacred blade of mockery was forged by evolution so that it, and the masters who wield it, would be humanity's only defense against the complete Spencer Prattification of the species.

There are people we each encounter in our lives who are not meant for the banality of this world. Not meant to separate darks from lights or stare at numbered screens in DMVs. They ought to be riding on hunks of magma and iron hurtling through space and destroying moons. Seanbaby, I suspect, is one of these people. I don't know because I've never met him; he was supposed to visit once but suddenly couldn't because he was having sex with a girl in Portland. My only point of reference is his non-fiction piece, "How to Show America You Care With Homemade Fireworks," which probably deserves to be included in the canon of American Literature, or at the very least, laminated by someone.

This was the first of Seanbaby's Cracked articles to make me laugh so hard that I got kind of mad at my computer for embarrassing me in public. It was comedy without dead spots, just pure rapid-fire madness - from Spontaneo: The Dog who Just Doesn't Give a Fuck's chain of reasoning being simply "Meat! Fucking!" to the Punchmaster's first line being "wait...you're not the real Chewbacca!" - that never let up. But the thing that stuck with me the most was this page:

Seanbaby thanks April O'Neil every month for taking pictures of herself using his EGM column as underwear. You can follow him on Twitter or face him on Facebook. His website is Seanbaby.com.