The issue isn't offense-taking, it's the piling on. I'm 100% good with people saying, "Hey, what you're calling an innocent joke is actually a really shitty, ugly thing to say to someone." That's a valid complaint whether it's directed at a professional comedian or a friend at a coffee shop. What the internet does is make it very easy for 100,000 other people to come screaming onto the scene purely because they see a chance to kick somebody. They're just there for the conflict, because it's fun to put an asshole "in their place." You want to know how to tell the difference?

It's pretty easy: When the subject apologizes OR if it turns out that the subject never did the thing they were accused of, do the critics admit they were wrong? Or do they just keep right on piling on, using the apology/evidence of innocence as fuel for the fire? ("Oh OF COURSE he denies saying it!!!").

That's where it ruins things for everybody, because when a valid complaint DOES come along, it's easy to dismiss it as, "Oh, it's those PC thugs piling on again." And that bad, because there is tons of shit that's worth calling out. Humanity is still full of just awful attitudes toward the most powerless groups among us. But all of this is why on Cracked we actually try really hard to walk through the reasoning behind our criticism, not just casually calling someone a racist but explaining why seemingly innocuous things can be toxic.

As long as I've known it the majority(not all but a majority) of cracked articles use click bait and have before buzzfeed. In reality cracked started click bait, but with content that is actually entertaining

If she has already agreed to do it then I think it's best I just stay out of the way. Unless there's more than one of them, in which case that seems like a systemic problem.

In the early days of my blog (we're talking late 90s here) my most common running bit was an article that started out normal and then slowly went off the rails, like seeing how long the reader would stick with it before realizing the author was insane. So one Halloween I just had a simple idea to write a campfire story that started out like this very straightforward haunted house thing, then it would slowly get stupider and stupider, until they were being chased around this house by a pile of haunted meat products. It went over so well that the next year I wanted to do it again, but basically set it in the same universe and as a continuation of that story. Around then I started sketching out the larger themes and universe and this continued for about five years, until I had something that was about novel length. But that's why JDATE reads are more episodic than my other books, it was originally a serial and each bit came to what felt like an ending. I think it was in the third year I started calling it "John Dies at the End" as a running joke, like every year they'd come back to find out if John was going to die in that one.

They own every aspect of Cracked, including the library of old magazines that I think they still have in a room somewhere. But it doesn't come up very often because we aren't really using any of the IP from it (like we don't use that blond kid mascot or anything). And none of the staff carried over, that was a couple of companies ago (after the original magazine folded, it got sold and then sold again).

Probably Douglas Adams, just because that was the first time I saw a writer really dedicate himself to working a punchline into every sentence of narration - a character walks through a door, and there's something funny about the door. But I've read more Stephen King than anyone, the little things he does to ground the world (such as, mentioning real brands and TV shows) makes the horror so much scarier. You can see I do that a lot.

Geography. Both of my book, uh, franchises take place in fictional towns, and in fictional buildings. The action depends on characters being in a certain place at a certain time and their reason for being there has to make sense. So I have to keep track of how far away this imaginary building is from that one, and how far away both are from the highway, because there can't be any moments where the reader stops and says, "Wait, how did he get there so fast? I thought the reason they were in danger was because he was like two hours away." So there's this very tedious process of mapping out where everything and everybody is, there's nothing fun or creative about it, but it has to be done, and I have gotten stopped for long stretches because of having backed myself into a corner geographically. Not to compare myself with him, but I think George RR Martin also struggles with this, like you can see instances where it took one character several months to traverse the map, then in another a different character just arrives at their destination as if they flew there. People ask why he takes so long to write a book but I'm amazed he's able to do them at all, the complexity astounds me.

Snake, the movie is only six minutes long and the last five are just of the snake digesting him. It's based on a true story.

No question, it's that one I wrote with Jack about guns: http://www.cracked.com/article_20396_5-mind-blowing-facts-nobody-told-you-about-guns.html There was just so much research to do, and so much of that research is biased or politicized, and we were so obsessed with trying to be balanced in our approach ... it went through a lot of drafts, a lot of scrapped entries, a lot of homework. I thought it turned out well though, got a lot of positive emails about it.

Y'know, John Dies at the End is one of my favourite reads I've experienced and I enjoyed the movie adaptation and this is the first time I've ever seen its acronym. JDATE sounds like one of those themed dating websites.

I would also love to get my hardcovers signed.

We talked about a tour early in the process when we were discussing promotion of this book, and I kind of shot it down just purely because of the time commitment. Remember I have three jobs going right now: 1) working full time at Cracked 2) promoting this new book 3) writing JDATE 3. So taking two weeks of precious vacation time from Cracked to hit the road and sign books would be a lot of fun but it would make life a lot harder for me in the future, due to the amount of piled-up work that would greet me when I got back.

The signed books thing is kind of the same deal - the last time I offered to sign books by mail (and just kind of mentioned it briefly on FB and in the forum) I got more than 250 orders. I don't have a staff, so it's just me signing and buying packing materials and driving back and forth to the post office (and for international orders, filling out that customs form for everyone) and that wound up taking A LOT of time. Remember that a certain number of them are going to get lost, or be wrong, or come back due to a bad address, and once again it's all on me to work through and fix it. Like even if I charged some crazy amount for each one it wouldn't matter - it's not about the money, it's about time.

I don't have a lot of spare time, so I'd hire other people to kill at random for me, I'd call myself the Outsourcer. Or some other name my staff came up with, I'd outsource that part too.

I don't want anyone to misconstrue what I'm about to say - the magic of Cracked is that many of your favorite articles were written by people who had literally never written anything before - we're willing to coach people through that process and watching them grow into writers is what makes this job worthwhile. But in terms of "Standing out" meaning "hey look at that guy" (as opposed to "Hey this pitch looks like it can work") usually it's the ones who have a distinct voice, like when Robert Brockway showed up in 2007 there was no doubt, it was clear he had his own rhythm and voice etc and had been doing it a while. As for me, it was probably after running my own site for a few years, maybe around 2003-04, though there are people who insist they like my early stuff better, so maybe I'm steadily getting worse?

I'm just impressed that you're able to tell they're squirrels

Our two most famous ones had babies and for some reason decided that was more important, we still have Kathy Benjamin and Kristi Harrison and some promising new ones like Eden Dranger and Emma Larkins, but yeah we need way more. It doesn't matter how open-minded your writers are, they'll never have the same perspective. But the most important thing is we need writers who are willing to abandon their families.

Rico unfortunately passed away early this year, he got an infection that spread in a matter of hours. We rushed him to the vet in the wee hours of the morning but it was too late, their metabolism runs so fast that you have to catch things as soon as they happen. They are fragile creatures and we knew that when we got him, it's one of the risks. We have another golden retriever now, btw.

I grew up in the word processor era, so there's nothing linear about the way I write (I can't imagine writing with pen and paper) - it's all cut and paste and endless rewrites. Every sentence has been rewritten 20-25 times, etc. I'll jump ahead and write scenes from later in the book, I'll move around conversations ... it's a jumbled mess. If you were to look at the working doc for JDATE 3 you'd think I'd lost my mind.

I can't say anything about any upcoming movie or TV stuff, as for the JDATE movie, I knew going in that a movie that held perfectly to my vision of the novel would be a terrible movie - the plot structure would be all wrong for film. So I never had any illusions that they could shoot a scene-by-scene recreation that would be like four movies long, I knew he would have to take what worked about the book and compress it down to about 25% of its size. So understanding that, I thought what he created was miraculous. By the way, I think at this point like ten times as many people have seen the movie as have read the book, I think it still hangs around people's Netflix recommendations if they like horror at all.

Any of Seanbaby's Popsicle Pete comics.

Why an Asian sounding surname specifically?

follow up: How much work goes in to researching topics before you record, or do you only participate in topics you're already well versed in?

It's all just Soren in various wigs

It's like 5% different in tone from JDATE, it's not a straight horror novel but if there was no name on the cover it'd take you about ten seconds to realize who wrote it. I'm still me.

That's probably not an effective strategy, what is more worth your time is making sure YOU don't have the same opinion about kids once you're older and crankier. But you probably will - your kids will seem like they have it easy (have you heard they may have a pill that mimics the benefits of exercise? Imagine your lazy sons sitting around playing games all day, and they have Brad Pitt's abs) and their slang will grate on your ears. For whatever reason, each generation forgets what it was like to be on the other end of it, saying, "Oh sure we had our flaws, but we were NOTHING like these worthless kids today!"

Just see some of his replies.

Dude, I still slaughter cows every year or so... usually a couple of days after I tell people that "I think I've seen Fred Chu around... didn't he die or something?"

Yeah we were in the same line at Chipotle two years ago, I was the guy who kept screaming "DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM" at the cash register guy when he tried to charge me for double meat.

He once farted while having a boner. Anyone's life would change.

Concerning your edit, there is an older article full of book recommendations that I wanna say Brockway wrote. It's where I found my all time favorite book, Lamb by Christopher Moore. I'll try to dig it up for you later.

It's shameful how little time I have to read these days, I liked 14 by Peter Clines a lot (Lovecraftian horror, but in a very grounded way) and you're going to think I'm just shilling here but The Unnoticeables by Robert Brockway is great, it's horror set in a 1970s punk universe, I've never read anything like it.

As for how I do what I do... I work 80-100 hours a week, depending on the week. I get up at 9 and work until 1-2 AM, I will take a few hours off on the weekends to watch a movie or something with my wife, that's it. I don't go out, I don't have hobbies (I haven't bought a video game since March), I work while the TV is on. I have a laptop on my exercise bike, so I can keep answering email while I work out. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, there's no work/life balance here. But entertainment careers tend to be short and I want to create as much as I can while people are listening. And when it all goes away, I want to know that I did good work while I could.

I don't know exactly because I don't have a calendar, it's kind of a catch-22

She's gone, this time. I wouldn't rob that moment of significance by bringing her back, that's cheap.

It's called projection.

Well I'm on here every day, check my post history. But the pockets of racists and such fucking terrify me. You'll see the old "Fat people hate" guys brigade some thread and upvote the nastiest shit to the top, and you'll think, "Oh my god, Redditors are monsters." But then you'll go into some science thread where all the comments are thoughtful and sharp and realize that all you're seeing are these gangs that kind of hop from thread to thread, upvoting each others' hatred to try to make it look like their point of view is the majority. I try really hard not to paint all of Reddit with the same brush, but seeing a glimpse of that ugly side makes it hard. Especially the kind of overt racism/xenophobia you see in r/worldnews, etc.

Don't get obsessed with coming up with the perfect idea for a story. If you have a lame idea, just write that. Originality isn't going to come from your plot, it's going to come from your voice and your point of view and your characters. So even if yours is a paint by numbers murder mystery, write it. Don't sit there and say, "But does the world need another murder mystery?" because that's not the question. Every story has been told for ten thousand years, but there is only one of you.

I actually don't drink, I have never had alcohol but I'm told that Scotch feels like you've set your mouth on fire. If I decided to get started on alcoholism I probably wouldn't begin there, that seems to be more for advanced users.