You're probably familiar with Cracked.com, the epic listicle site that was popular a decade ago and now mainly exists to promote paid content. In their heyday, they made many of the standard "lol look at how evil North Korea is" articles, but what stood out more to me was this article, 6 Ugly Facts Of Life In Communist Cuba, which wasw ritten with input from some gusanos and reads like US state department propaganda.

Most of the article is literally anecdotes from these people, which are the standard "Castro bad" crap, but one is notably ridiculous:

One day, my sister came home and exclaimed, 'Fidel is better than Jesus!' In school they had asked the kindergartners to close their eyes and pray to Jesus for ice cream. When they opened their eyes -- nothing. Then they closed their eyes again and prayed to Fidel for ice cream, and ... surprise! Ice cream cups on their desks!

matt Wow, such a plausible story! How could Fidel deceive the children like this?

The few sections that are actually sourced aren't any better:

It's hard to say how many people Castro's new regime gunned down (evil dictators being notoriously spotty record-keepers), but the butcher's bill was probably around 30,000.

This links to the 1995-ass website of some rando Italian-American writer called Piero Scaruffi, who cites The Black Book of Communism among others. A very credible source, I'm sure.

He got lucky: Thanks to Operation Pedro Pan, a joint venture between the Swiss embassy and the Catholic Church to spirit children to America, he secured permission to leave ... alone. "So I came to the U.S. without my parents and lived in a refugee camp in Florida."

No criticism of Operation Pedro Pan? At all? Alright!

  • BeamBrain [he/him]
    ·
    8 months ago

    You left out the best part:

    "In Cuba, we were upper-middle-class," Vivian said. "My grandfather was a bank vice president; my father worked for another bank and also wrote comedy sketches. We lived with extended family in a chic apartment. My sister and I had our own room; my brother had his own; we had a maid who lived in a small room behind the kitchen. She was a Spaniard and blind in one eye. I was a little scared of her."

  • TreadOnMe [none/use name]
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    edit-2
    8 months ago

    Tbf, those children would not have had ice cream without Fidel. Particularly free ice cream. Getting ice cream to happen for everybody in Cuba was a huge endeavour for Castro, as he believed every person in Cuba deserved at least that luxury.

    • nohaybanda [he/him]
      ·
      8 months ago

      I think ice cream is just the nice little treat on top of something much more important. Making it accessible means widespread electrification and refrigeration. Two things absolutely critical for a modern society.

    • BeamBrain [he/him]
      ·
      8 months ago

      They also included Woody Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land" in an article about songs with dark hidden messages

      "This Land Is Your Land" is, for lack of a better term, a song about communism. The opening lines are a bit of a giveaway, but only if you know the background: "This land is your land/This land is my land." OK, well, that doesn't have to be referring to the idea of public ownership of all property. Maybe "The invisible hand of the free market will dictate who is the rightful owner of this land" just didn't fit into the rhyme scheme.

      • BelieveRevolt [he/him]
        hexagon
        ·
        edit-2
        8 months ago

        Wow, I never would've figured out that Jimi Hendrix's Star-Spangled Banner wasn't meant to be a straight-laced anthem! capitaldcolon Thanks for telling me about that hidden message, Cracked!

        edit: 99 Luftballons had a ”hidden message”, unless of course you were one of the millions of people who spoke German, in which case it wasn't hidden at all. Must've been a good gig getting paid to write this.

  • doublepepperoni [none/use name]
    ·
    8 months ago

    One day, my sister came home and exclaimed, 'Fidel is better than Jesus!' In school they had asked the kindergartners to close their eyes and pray to Jesus for ice cream. When they opened their eyes -- nothing. Then they closed their eyes again and prayed to Fidel for ice cream, and ... surprise! Ice cream cups on their desks!

    Can't argue with those results

  • EmoThugInMyPhase [he/him]
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    edit-2
    8 months ago

    The Quorators got a partnership with Cracked for like 3 months then got fired for supporting Palestine and clogging the Cracked office’s toilet

    • CloutAtlas [he/him]
      ·
      8 months ago

      You'd be surprised how many Cracked alumni show up in media.

      Soren Bowie writes for American Dad! now (which I think is actually the most tolerable Seth show, probably because it's currently just absurdist humour and not random jabs at minorities like Family Guy)

      Dan O'Brien writes for Last Week Tonight, which is lib but did help "radicalize" at least one person I know from radical centrism so I'll forgive the show for being lib

      Doctor Mister Cody Johnson has a show on Youtube about how bad feral boars are with Katy Stoll

      Robert Evans is now a famous fed

      • BelieveRevolt [he/him]
        hexagon
        ·
        8 months ago

        Cracked inexplicably fired all those people and shut down their video section, then the site pretty much died.

        • barrbaric [he/him]
          ·
          8 months ago

          IIRC they got owned as part of facebook's "pivot to video" where they lied about analytics.

        • SpookyGenderCommunist [they/them, she/her]
          ·
          edit-2
          8 months ago

          All the more reason why I don't understand why we're digging up this dead horse to beat it more. Who cares?

          I expect more refined dunking from my fellow hexbears

        • FloridaBoi [he/him]
          ·
          8 months ago

          They also had a decent podcast hosted by the editor in chief Jack O’Brien but then he left for another site and all of cracked went downhill.

    • ashinadash [she/her]
      ·
      8 months ago

      Never seen Jesus redistributing any land or persecuting plantation owners fidel-cool

  • ReadFanon [any, any]
    ·
    8 months ago

    Ah Cracked, where Robert Fedvans cut his teeth before making it big as a podcaster grifting baby leftists.

  • buh [she/her]
    ·
    8 months ago

    Praying to Fidel works though, I prayed for him to persecute plantation owners and it came true

  • mushroom
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    edit-2
    2 months ago

    deleted by creator

  • jimmyjohnsandwichfive
    ·
    8 months ago

    I remember seeing that Ice Cream thing in a really shitty anti communist PSA we watched on hextube lmao