"Oh look, TLG updated. I guess I owe Todd in HR a dollar."

(I’m not going to link to the thread that today’s bit comes from, not because it was an especially terrible thread or anything, but just because it’s in a restricted area of the boards and a good part of you wouldn’t be able to see it anyway.)

So in the Cracked Writer’s Lounge, someone had started a thread asking about the pay scale for writing articles. It was kind of a dumb question, since the answer is plastered all over about eight different places (the answer is fifty dollars, no matter what. In case you were curious.) However, it led to someone else making the joke that they had thought that we were paid by the dick joke, which served as my inspiration for the coming three-hundred-and-fifty-word travesty.

"Wait, he just mentioned dicks! I LOVE dicks!"

There really isn’t a funny story to go along with today’s update. I just remember being in kind of a dumb, over-caffeinated mood and wanting to see just how many times I could use the word “dick” in a single post. Some TLG readers may be shocked to learn the answer: a whole bunch.

Now, with the preamble out of the way, let’s wait no longer before stumbling headlong into my explanation of the majesty that is Cracked’s approach to a dick-joke-based economy. For your enhanced pleasure, I have modified the original post in order to highlight every single reference I make to the male genitalia. Enjoy!

RANDOM FORUM USER: “Wait, I thought we were paid by the dick joke.”

That’s how it used to be in the old days when Cracked was the only place on the internet to find penis jests. But pretty soon that shit went mainstream and we entered the period of time most commonly known as the Dick Boom. No matter where you looked, there were people giggling about cocks; anonymous sources telling the Drudge Report that George Bush had eighteen ballsacks, people buying face-penises for their avatars on GaiaOnline. 4Chan was so inundated with dick jokes that simply typing in the web address caused your monitor to turn into an actual severed penis. It was bad, but it didn’t get really bad until people started trading dick jokes on-margin. Do you know what happened then?

The price of dick jokes plummeted overnight to a rate of 400 dicks to the titter.

Sorry, fellah. That last sentence isn't nearly as filthy as it sounds. We're talking economics, not bukkakenomics.

Panicked dickvestors rushed the dick-banks to make mass dick-withdrawls, causing the banks to exhaust their dick supply in less than four hours. Millions went dickless, jokeless. Wailing filled the internet, and sorrow reigned. The Dick Bubble had burst.

Luckily, while frenzied investing was ruining the American dickonomy, David Wong had predicted the dick market crash and began exploring dick futures overseas. He managed to convince a consortium of wealthy Greek aristocrats not only that Cracked-flavor dick jokes had value as exotic tourist attractions, but that he would also personally guarantee a minimum of fourteen such dick jokes in ever Cracked article from thereon. A rate of fourteen thousand drachmas to the dick joke was agreed upon, and thus when dickvestors were losing their shirts the country over, only Cracked.com managed to stay afloat. Thanks to Wong’s guidance, Cracked was once again free to bring the magic of laughing at cocks to a new generation of internet users.

(David Wong would later realize that he didn’t know the drachma-to-dollar exchange rate, and decided that it probably worked out to about fifty dollars an article because “You know, what the hell.”)

Cracked: The Purest Dicks, Into The Future