Edgy comedy website, Cracked, has silently let go “a lot” of its staff after various writers and some senior staff were let go from the site, which has been confirmed by various writers let go and the executive editor, David Wong, confirmed the news.
Across Twitter various individuals caught wind of former Cracked writers who have been laid off in the process of Cracked trimming the financial fat.
https://twitter.com/BryceRileyNews/status/937834785753276416
As you can see, one of those individuals let go is former managing editor, John Cheese. So Cracked had no qualms about getting rid of its upper management.
Cheese made that tweet about being let go shortly after getting the pink slip on December 4th, 2017.
I am officially looking for writing and/or editing work. If anyone has any leads or openings, please feel free to pass them along.
— John Cheese (@johncheese) December 4, 2017
This was further corroborated by executive editor, David Wong, who first tweeted out about the news of writers looking for work.
Cracked is still alive and I still work there and my plan is to keep publishing good things until the sun swallows the earth. But yeah there are some amazing people out there looking for work.
— David Wong (@JohnDiesattheEn) December 5, 2017
Over on the official forums Wong answered the burning question on everyone’s mind: Was Cracked shutting down?
According to Wong, Cracked is not shutting down.
Wong explained that a lot of the video staff are gone and many other members from the writing and editorial divisions…
“The site is still here! I’m still here!
“There is a core group of editors still here to continue the operation and at this time we still have all contractors/freelancers doing the same stuff as they were doing before. But yes, sadly a lot of staff were let go, particularly a lot of those based on LA, including a lot of the faces you know from video.”
Cracked was one of the larger sites out there that took aim at #GamerGate early on, when they published a series of articles targeting the consumer revolt against corruption and unethical practices in the media industry.
On September 16th, 2014 Cracked published an article “5 Things I learned as the Internet’s Most Hated Person”, with the byline given to Zoe Quinn. It reached nearly 2 million people. The puff piece for Quinn by Quinn helped set the stage for what was to come from the Cracked crew.
Just a day later, on September 17th, 2014 they published “4 Ways Gamers Still Suck at Dealing With Women”. They didn’t hesitate to continue beating #GamerGate into the ground.
And then on September 25th, 2014, Cracked published the article “7 Reasons ‘Gamergate’ Proves Humanity is Doomed”. The title to the article is quite self-explanatory.
The hate-boner Cracked exhibited toward #GamerGate didn’t age too well after the facts were made clear and it turned out that many of these sites defending and protecting unethical practices and behavior were made to look unethical and anti-consumer. This was hammered home hard when the CON leaks revealed that members of Quinn’s Crash Override Network had engaged in targeted harassment, or that various websites had breached FTC regulation while shilling for friends, as documented by DeepFreeze.it.
Now that Cracked is in search of new staff, one must wonder if they’ll take a more ethical approach when covering hot button topics like #GamerGate?
(Thanks for the news tip Blaugast)
