Cracked.com's Top 25 Articles of 2009

25 Danny Gallagher's '7 Clearly Fake News Stories That Fooled The Mainstream Media'

In the olden days when shoes were a luxury and smallpox was a right of passage, men like William Randolph Hearst used their complete control over communication airwaves to tell the general populace whatever lie happened to be convenient (see marijuana is evil) or interesting (see below).

With the advent of the Internet, the situation has changed so that instead of powerful media moguls spreading bullshit, pretty much anybody can do it. After all, if the story is good enough, the mainstream media will report it, no matter how transparently retarded it is.

24 Cole Finchen's '7 Beloved Celebrities And The Awful Shit You Forgot They Did'

We are a pretty forgiving society when it's convenient. So what if Halle Berry has a habit of hit and run mayhem? She showed her rack in Swordfish. If we're fond enough of your music, movies or boobs, you can get busted committing what's known as an "atrocity" when done by someone who isn't cool. If we like you, all you have to do is sit back and wait for our short attention spans to take over, and the good will to return. For instance, you probably forgot about the time ...

23 Marc Russel's '5 Real Life Soldiers Who Make Rambo Look Like a Pussy'

We all understand that action movies are cheesy escapism. After all, could one commando really take out a whole compound full of bad guys?

Actually, yes. It turns out the history books are full of stories of soldiers doing things so badass they'd hesitate to put them into a film for fear of killing the realism. Like these five, for example.

22 Mike Volz's 'The 7 Most Pointlessly Horrifying Plastic Surgery Procedures'

Plastic surgery has blessed us with something our forefathers never had: huge boobs on skinny girls. But science--and shallow people with extra money to throw around--were not satisfied with that miracle.

No, they continued developing plastic surgery techniques that strayed out of the realm of the vain and image-obsessed and into the land of WTF.

21 Chris Bucholz's 'A Review of the Pirated Copy of Windows 7 I Bought On eBay'

The official release of Windows 7 is only a few weeks away, and if you're anything like me, you're probably asking yourself what effect this will have on your lives. Will the gates of Heaven open up and a consort of large breasted angels descend to guide you into computing heaven?

20 Cole Gamble's '7 Great Products For Telling the World You're a Rich Dick'

The thing about being super rich is that you eventually run out of things to buy. You can only live in so many houses, or drive so many cars, or pay to have so many enemies killed.

Fortunately, before you ever get so desperate as to, say, give money to the poor, there is a whole industry devoted to inventing ridiculous things to waste it on.

19 Evan Hoovler's '6 Beloved TV Shows That Traumatized Cast Members'

Anyone who's worked shoveling shit at a circus can tell you that making entertainment isn't as much fun as watching it.

The same goes for TV shows, and in some cases, it's even worse than the elephant shit thing. There are shows you loved and grew up with that, behind the scenes, were a constant, dark carnival of torment.

18 Mark Hill's '8 Racist Ads You Won't Believe Are From the Last Few Years'

In the Golden Age of Advertising, producing commercials was easy. You could pretty much toss in any horrific stereotype you thought would help sell your product, and if any minorities complained, who cares? Minorities aren't the majority, duh.

Of course, in this era of political correctness, those clumsy, cringe-worthy stereotypes are a thing of the past.

Well, almost...

17 Shezah Salam's '7 Inventors You Didn't Know You Wanted to Punch In the Face'

Throughout the course of an average day, you're probably faced with 10 to 20 different things that make you say, "Man, if I knew who came up with that idea, I'd punch them clean in the face." But where do you place that absolutely understandable rage? You place it on these people. With your fist, if possible.

16 Joe Russo's '17 More Images You Won't Believe Aren't Photoshopped'

This is the fourth installment of our series where we prove that sometimes, real life is stranger than Photoshop (see Part One, Part Two and Part Three).

So enjoy our continuing chronicle of jaw-dropping pics that make you shout "FAKE!" the moment you see them, but in fact are not. Even if, in some cases, we really wish they were ...

15 Nathan Birch's '6 Creepy Urban Legends That Happen to be True (Part 3!)'

It's that time again.

It's becoming a reader favorite and Halloween tradition for us to count down those ridiculously over-the-top gruesome urban myths that, oh by the way, happen to be true. This is our third year (HERE is the first one, and HERE is the second) and once again these stories prove that truth is far more horrifying than fiction.

14 Cezary Jan Strusiewicz's "7 Things Good Parents Do That Ruin Kids"

It seems like it's close to impossible to raise a normal child these days, what with the violent video games and the 4chan and the childhood obesity. But if the latest research is to be believed, even the good stuff we thought we were doing for our kids is ruining them.

13 - Daniel Gingras's '6 Bullshit Facts About Psychology That Everyone Believes'

Psychology is one of those subjects that everybody likes to think they know something about. We love to go around diagnosing our friends and co-workers, both to make sense of the world and to make ourselves feel like we're smarter than they are.

But like any science that makes its way into the pop culture, a lot of the "common sense" statements we hear every day are so wrong that they border on raving idiocy. Such as...

12 Luke McKinney's 'Tattoo Body Map: What Your Bad Decision Says About You'

Tattoos are reverse time machines: with time travel you can send a warning back to your younger self, with tattoos you send a mistake forward to your older self.

11 Joe Russo's '15 More Images You Won't Believe Aren't Photoshopped'

Yeah, another one. You people apparently can't get enough of this shit. Probably helps that the images seem to be getting more insane as he goes along.

10 Ned Resnikoff and Peter Hildebrand's '8 Racist Words You Use Every Day'

Have you ever worried that, no matter how hard you try, you'll just never be racist enough? Well, you're in luck. As it turns out, you've been unconsciously using racial slurs your entire life! Slurs like...

9 C. Coville's '5 Myths That People Don't Realize Are Admitted Hoaxes'

It's no surprise that the world gets taken in by hoaxers and con men. They're really good at what they do and most of us are bored enough to believe anything as long as it takes our mind off the cubicle for a while.

And even when the hoaxers get accused of fakery, we may still take their side. After all, those negative doubting types try to shoot down everything! Who cares what they say! What is harder to explain, though, is the times when the perpetrators of a hoax come out themselves and confess to the fakery... and people still go right on believing.

8 David Dietle's '7 Man-Made Substances that Laugh in the Face of Physics'

The universe is full of weird substances like liquid metal and whatever preservative keeps Larry King alive. But mankind isn't happy to accept the weirdness of nature when we can create our own abominations of science that, due to the miracle of technology, spit in nature's face and call it retarded.

That's why we came up with...

7 Matthew Hayden's '6 Adorable Cat Behaviors With Shockingly Evil Explanations'

There seem to be two kinds of people in the world: those who don't understand cats, and those who think cats are kind of douchebags.

Unfortunately for cat lovers, science has kind of come down on the side of that second group. Research has revealed that a lot of the quirky and even cute things your kitty does are actually signs that your cat is kind of a dick.

6 Nathan Birch's '6 Things Your Body Does Every Day That Science Can't Explain'

Pubes!

5 Christian Madera's '7 Sex Tips from Cosmo That Will Put You in the Hospital'

You've walked innocently past issues of Cosmopolitan magazine a thousand times, every time you've checked out at a grocery store. If you glanced at the covers then you know it's all about sex, and helping girls bring out the sexual animal in their man.

But littered amongst their mildly kinky and often impractical advice ("wear a wet t-shirt to bed!") you get horrifying tips that border on genital mutilation.

Think we're kidding? As we speak, Cosmo is advising women to...

4 Kathy Benjamin's '7 Secrets Only Two Living People Know (For Some Reason)'

What do you suppose are the most well-kept secrets in the world? The launch codes for the American nuclear arsenal? The location of Jimmy Hoffa's bones?

Not even close. Below are secrets that only two people on planet Earth know. Sometimes they have very good reasons to keep these secrets so fiercely. Other times, not so much.

3 Ian Fortey's '12 "Sexy" Ads That Will Give You Nightmares'

Sex sells, but that doesn't mean that selling things using sex is easy. You figure a little cleavage can go a long way to sell cars or beer, but in the wrong hands a sexy ad can turn into the stuff nightmares are made of.

Not even sexy nightmares, either.

2 Robert Evans's '7 Items You Won't Believe Are Actually Legal'

Drugs, artillery emplacements, napalm, prostitution - sometimes it seems like the best things in life are illegal. For some reason, the fascists who control this country don't believe in your God given right to smoke meth and man a 155-millimeter Howitzer.

Luckily for us, there are a lot of awesome things out there that Uncle Sam amazingly hasn't taken away from us yet. Read this article, and then go and pick up one of everything while you still can!

1 Jay Thomas's '6 Ridiculous Sex Myths (That Are Actually True)'

The only thing more awesome than an urban legend turning out to be true is if that same legend involves some sort of nefarious sex or groin related hilarity.

Luckily, all of these qualify.