Come Write For Cracked, Everybody! It Pays Money!

It's almost 2020, and Cracked is still here. We're under new ownership as of September 2019, but with the same editors and writers you know and love! Plus the soothing podcast voice of Alex Schmidt! I'm also here, but we're focusing on the positives today.

Cracked has been one of the single best places for freelance contributors to write for (and get paid by) since 2007, and we fully intend to continue to be that until someone pries the keyboards from our cold dead hands. If you want to contribute and get paid for it, there are a few ways to do so:

First, if you want to help make some of our most popular content and don't want to have to type a whole bunch of words, you can click here and submit entries for the "Pictofacts" or "Photoplasty" contests. The finished products look like this:

27 Uncomfortable Questions About Food, Answered

Well-Known Facts About Famous Places (That Are Dead Wrong)

Here's Why 15 Huge Franchises You Loved Totally Imploded

14 Terrible People And Why You Should Avoid Them

If, however, you prefer to write more words than that and want to pitch feature articles for us, regardless of your level of experience, you can email Cyriaque and his team at workshop@cracked.com. Articles pay between $100 and $250, based on length and the number of pieces you've written. They can provide you with further details. Some examples of feature articles include:

5 World-Changing News Stories (That Were Total BS)

A Crazy Theory About "The Shining" That's Actually True

5 Famous People Whose Entire Personality Was An Act

The OK Sign And History's Garbage Use Of "Ironic" Racism

Now, if you DO have a lot of previous writing experience, you can apply to be a Cracked columnist by emailing your qualifications (including links to some stuff you've written) to write@cracked.com. The pay ranges from $100 to $250, based on length. You'd be pitching them directly to me, Jason "David Wong" Pargin, so yes, there are some downsides to this one. Here are some recent columns, which tend to be more observational or opinion-based:

5 Reasons Gender-Flipped Remakes Never Work

6 Ways You Can Get Sucked Into The 'Incel' Trap

6 Ways Hollywood Ruins Fight Scenes

Reminder For 'Stranger Things' Fans: The Eighties Sucked

If you've been around for a while, you might be asking what happened to the "Workshop," the private message board where people used to post pitches for articles and such. That's under renovation at the moment. We really hadn't updated that whole process since we launched it during the Bush administration, and it was kind of a huge pain in the ass for contributors and editors alike. We want to bring it back in some better, more modern form in the spring, if we're all still alive then.

So again:

If you like photoshopping things or superimposing interesting words on images, we run open submission contests on the message board.

If you want to write feature articles, you can email your ideas to workshop@cracked.com. No previous experience required, but you do have to be good at writing.

If you are an experienced writer and want to apply to be a columnist, send links for your previous work to write@cracked.com.

If you're confused about the difference between a feature article and a column and aren't sure which one to email, just try one of them. If it's wrong, somebody will say, "Hey, you should email the other one instead." Also, if you don't immediately hear back, please don't start yelling at us.

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And now, a Thanksgiving note:

Hi, I'm Jason, and it was my turn to write the Thanksgiving "Write for Us" post this year. How are you doing?

As you know, literally every country on Earth spends today celebrating the fact that America's early European settlements didn't end in mass starvation and cannibalism. We eat turkey, with its terrible dry meat, to remind ourselves of the hardships of our forefathers while we watch pro football and parades -- the most hateful and dreary of spectacles, respectively. Only by tasting our ancestors' suffering can we honor their sacrifices.

I assume everyone who clicked on this article looking for freelance work has already clicked away from it to send an email or pitch some stuff, and everyone who's still here just has it open on their phone to appear to be reading something while they avoid conversation with their extended family. So since I'm basically talking out loud to myself, let me be sincere for a moment.

Did you know that Daniel "DOB" O'Brien, formerly of Cracked fame, won an Emmy a couple of months ago?

He's now on the writing staff of Last Week Tonight With John Oliver. If you want to know where other former Cracked people have gone, I've been keeping an updated list here of the great stuff they're making and how you can support them.

This is an industry that's in constant turmoil for a whole bunch of reasons you'd probably find boring, and I could write several thousand words about the people who are gone and how much we miss them. I could write more about how blessed I am to work with the people I do. Robert Brockway, Cyriaque Lamar, Alex Schmidt, Ann Smiley, and Logan Trent are all heroes, as are all of the people who work behind the scenes to keep the lights on, including everyone at Literally Media who believed in the team enough to take us all onboard.

Then there are the contractors and freelancers, who are too numerous to name but are the lifeblood of the site and, well, the entire industry. I've worked with something like 40 different columnists in the last year alone, and literally hundreds of writers have come through the Workshop in that time. Working with them is by far the best part of the job, aside from the lavish influencer parties. I'm always eager to see who turns up next, and I'm always thrilled to see former freelancers who've gone on to do bigger and better things (including several who've written for Saturday Night Live, among other shows).

And if you're reading these words because you're just a loyal fan and like to read whatever we post, thank you. From all of us here, you have our sincerest gratitude. You could be doing literally anything else right now, and you're choosing to do this. That warms our hearts and, you know, keeps us employed. I hope this site still makes you slightly smarter and happier than you were before each time you click. Everyone who comes through these doors really is trying to do good work and if you want to be a part of it, we're waiting.

-- Jason "David Wong" Pargin