Poll: Do you trust Cracked?

[Professor James]

No but I would trust Michael Swaim with my life.

Who's Michael Swaim?

 

[Anarchemitis]

Partly.
For example, if a large airplane did crash into a nuclear reactor cooling tower, it would cause negligible damage. Their story [http://www.cracked.com/article_18699_6-baffling-flaws-in-famous-sci-fi-technology.html] in that respect is accurate.

 

[Dogstile]

No but I would trust Michael Swaim with my life.

Who's Michael Swaim?

http://www.newgrounds.com/collection/blockhead

Please, please enjoy

Ack, that's, swain, not swaim. Honest mistake

 

[Ham_authority95]

It's a satirical website, so no.

If I want a credible source, I'll try the links that the bottom of Wikipedia articles.

 

[Crazy_Dude]

Sometimes but as a general rule I dont really believe anything 100% that is stated on the internet.

 

[Something Amyss]

Cracked is funny and sometimes informative. I treat it as infotainment. I wouldn't run with a Cracked article as the sole source of my information, but it might prompt me to look further into a claim.

 

[Ironic Pirate]

Not for facts so much, but unlike most places, they don't really have an agenda. They just make jokes, and in that sense, I trust them more than any other place than here. They twist the facts as much as FOX, but they do it to make me laugh, FOX does it to try and manipulate me into agreeing with them.

In that sense, I trust them as I would a friend. He might not be telling the truth when he tells me he heard about a super-group consisting of James Hetfield, Jeff Loomis, Gus G, Dave Lombardo and the Flea, but he was doing it to cheer me up, not scam me or anything.

And now I really want that super-group...

 

[Professor James]

I trust them not to make shit up out of the blue but...

Ok they had an article about 7 Legal ways the Cops can screw you. One of them (the one about D.C. cops being able to arrest women carrying condoms (as prostitutes)) was a myth that the D.C. police have denied themselves.

So yeah I know their fact checking isn't perfect.

I guess you can say that, but that's one writer.

 

[Koroviev]

No. I definitely would not cite it for a school report.

 

[superbatranger]

I don't go on Cracked to be informed.

 

[Berethond]

I trust as much as I trust The Colbert Report.
Which is quite a lot.

I'm totally going to cite them on a research paper one of these days.

 

[Nouw]

Sometimes, but I would never site it ironically.

It's quite informative, like the list of badasses that failed to deliver.

 

[lacktheknack]

I read one of the main contributors' books (Everything Is Going to Kill Everyone), and although they skew it for maximum comic effect, the guy did do his research.

 

[Trivun]

I trust them completely. Reason? They use plenty of sources. If they claim something as fact, then they provide sources to support that, or else it's something you can easily look up and check anyway. Every time I've done so, I've had a 100% record of finding stuff that Cracked says to actually be completely true. So yes, I do trust them. That being said, I wouldn't use them as a source for anything, but that's down to professionalism rather than not trusting what they say.

 

[OiXerxes]

Only when it seems plausible...hard to think of the example at the moment. While some of their writers are smart enough to give some videos as proof that Harrison Ford is a badass in real life and that there are children in parts of the world that zipline to school; however the one thing they "informed" me that I wish was true, (James Lipton writing the Thundercats theme song) they didn't cite and I can't find any proof, so it's usually a 70% humor and 30% truth for me, with that 70% used usually to troll people who hadn't read the article already.

 

[Murais]

Comics Code [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cracked_(magazine)]).

Most articles in cracked.com provide links to their sources, usually via Wikipedia (and while it's popular to dis Wikipedia, somewhat justified half a decade ago, its accuracy on academic topics is competitive with other common-use encyclopedias, such as Britannica and World Book).

I'd argue that cracked.com has more legitimacy than Fox News, less than snopes.com. That someone would quote cracked.com as a source, incidentally, doesn't mean he naïvely trusts it, but that he's debating fairly. It's a sound counterargument to say cracked.com is not reliable (enough), but then what is?

If he provided a link, though, it's in your hands to find a counter-source.

PS: As an atheist, I was less than thrilled with presumptions made in this article [http://www.cracked.com/article_15663_10-things-christians-atheists-can-and-must-agree-on.html] by David Wong that included the religious monopoly on morality (or rather Atheists could not justify basic ethics, such as reciprocity or equality). He also singled out atheists who cheered over the death of Falwell while omitting the droves who celebrated (and still consider justified) the assassination of Dr. George Tiller.

But that's a matter of one article having a certain bias; not the whole of a website.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

 

[CarpathianMuffin]

It's very informative, but there's definitely a slant given to provide humor. It's a good way to find some interesting subject matter, but never to rely on completely.

 

[loc978]

I trust 'em to make me giggle...

 

[crudus]

I trust it like I trust any comedy based media. I am sure there is at least a grain of truth to things they say (they link to sites and you can do your own fact checking). I am sure they try to only say things that are true and they have fact checked, but what news source doesn't do that? Sometimes people just have a bad source. You can't say they aren't credible because they present their data with comedy. Nor can you blame them if they are wrong; bad sources exist.

So yeah I know their fact checking isn't perfect.

No media's is though.

I'm totally going to cite them on a research paper one of these days.

I did that in a college English class. The teacher did not like that one bit.

 

[Red-Link]

I trust them completely. Reason? They use plenty of sources. If they claim something as fact, then they provide sources to support that, or else it's something you can easily look up and check anyway. Every time I've done so, I've had a 100% record of finding stuff that Cracked says to actually be completely true. So yes, I do trust them. That being said, I wouldn't use them as a source for anything, but that's down to professionalism rather than not trusting what they say.

This is more or less exactly how I feel about it. I love to bring up Cracked articles in private arguments with friends because they're both amusing and informative. I wouldn't exactly have high hopes for a publication or a politician who cited them more than once, though. Then again, I wouldn't discount them immediately...