Am I Getting More Childish?

One of two things is true: either my sense of humour is regressing, or the quality of the humour purveyed by Cracked in the Internet age is much improved from the last time I read the print magazine (approximately 21 years ago).

I remember Cracked magazine as an inferior reflection of Mad magazine–itself not known for highly intelligent humour (horrible movie parodies being much more prevalent than witty Don Martin hijinks)–with the kind of comedy that I felt I was too old for even before I was really into my teens.

Lately, though, I’ve been getting a lot of pointers to stuff at Cracked’s site, and a lot of it is striking me as pretty damn funny. So either the modern version reaches higher plateaus of humour, or else I’ve undergone a comedy appreciation devolution.

I’m fairly certain, for instance, that the puerile magazine I remember wouldn’t have been capable of humorous piece that operates as both a popularization of science, and a discussion of the ethical and philosophical implications of evolutionary biology. And yet… I give you What Is The Monkeysphere.

Not only do I not look down on that piece as puerile, but I positively approve of it. Hell, I wish I had written it. I wish I could consistently take complex discussions that start from modern research and then pass through a detailed look at the implications for various areas (including interpersonal ethics, societal relationships, politics, ecomonics, etc), all without becoming boring or dry.

Here’s a little bit. This is by far not the best bit, but it’s a two paragraph quote that includes my favourite joke in the piece:

Later, a far more realistic man sat the monkeys down and said, “You want bananas? Each of you go get your own. I’m taking a nap.” That man, of course, was German philosopher Hans Capitalism.

As long as everybody gets their own bananas and shares with the few in their Monkeysphere, the system will thrive even though nobody is even trying to make the system thrive. This is perhaps how Ayn Rand would have put it, had she not been such a hateful bitch.

Yes, that’s right, I skipped over some of the serious philosophical stuff just to get the Rand zinger in there.

I don’t mean to suggest, however, that every piece up at the Cracked site is up to this quality. But even the lesser pieces seem to have lots of things that make me smile.

Take for example, the Internet Safety Tips piece, which is made up entirely of warning labels like this one:

I get a good Rule 34 chuckle out of that particular one (although I would quickly admit that I laughed A LOT more at the physics warning labels back in the day) but there are three others in that piece that are very insightful while also being jokes.

And then, of course, there’s the lowest level of Internet postings: the list posts. Cracked seems to have a lot of these. And while they also don’t reach the heights of the Monkeysphere, there seems to be something in many of them that cracks me up. Many of these seem to be written in the same dialect that my poker pals speak in, and the style of humour seems very familiar.

Here’s a bunch of examples to illustrate what I mean.

From 12 Most Ridiculous Similes in Music History:

Switching gears and moving on to the awful simile at the end of the song’s rap verse, you’re “serious as cancer”? Really? We know that you’re trying to make a point, but that’s pretty fucking serious. Probably a little too serious, in fact, for your ridiculous metaphor about rhythm being a dancer.

To be fair, the poetic pickings are slim when trying to rhyme with “dancer.” Both “depantser” and “necromancer” would have also landed them high on this list, for instance, as would “Welcome to France, sir.”

Any post that includes both “necromancer” and “depantser” pretty much owns my sense of humour, regardless of how they are used. The fact that they are part of a four-way rhyme gag just makes it more so.

From The 10 Best Animated Movies for (Traumatizing) Kids:

#5. Who Framed Roger Rabbit
Why it scarred us:
Sudden puberty onset syndrome.

What? Don’t look at us like that. Most movie stars are so airbrushed nowadays that there’ not much difference between Jessica Alba and Jessica Rabbit anyway.

…

How it could have been worse:
Ask Japan. The weird pen-and-ink boob fetish has been taken to its logical conclusion in that land where even real, live porn actresses can’t compete unless they dress up like Sailor Moon.

I may be scarred as an adult by the #1 entry there. Yikes!

From The 20 Worst Album Titles of All Time:

#11. Elton John – Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy

We can’t put our finger on it, but there’ something wrong about this one. There’s nothing overtly filthy about it. It’s like Elton John’s effort to root out any homophobia in our subconscious.

What does it mean that I thought C-Murder might have been made up?

From The 9 Manliest Names in the World:

#5. Dr. Duncan Steel

The title is what makes this one. This man gets to be called “Doctor Steel” on a daily basis. That is so awesome that we’re thinking of forming a heavy metal band just so we can call it that. We can’t believe there hasn’t been some sort of comic book/cartoon villain with this name. Not even a James Bond film. Madness.

As an aside, how does anyone in any organization, much less the American military, seriously consider making someone with a name like Flex Plexico a spokesman for their organization?

From The Five Biggest Badass Popes:

Honorius III (1216-1227)

Honorius III would seem to be one of hundreds of relatively uninteresting popes who fill in the years between the badass ones. But, like a furry with an erotic squirrel costume so convincing that against all odds it gives you an erection, Honorius was one of those guys who was so good at something lame that it actually made him a badass.

In this case, Honorius was so pious that the temptations of this world were too easy for him, so he routinely summoned demons just to challenge himself. He even wrote a book about it so that your local parish priest could test himself against the denizens of the netherworld by opening some kind of flaming portal to hell.

While I didn’t learn anything new in the “Pope’s testicles” line from that piece, I did learn something about Dracula.

From 5 Upcoming Comic Book Movies That Must Be Stopped:

Luke Cage, a young gang member living in 1970s Harlem was arrested and imprisoned for a crime he didn’t commit. You may be disinclined to believe young Luke was innocent upon hearing, directly from his origin, that he was a gang member in 1970s Harlem. But to be fair, according to the movies the vast majority of gangland activity before 1991 was comprised of double-dutch competitions, choreographed roller skating and breakdancing to save the community center from an evil strip-mall developer.

The Namor the SubMariner theme song is genius.