Towards a theory of cringe
Mar. 12th, 2023 09:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabotabbyWarning! This is a very half-assed theory post about some thoughts that have been bouncing around in my head lately and should not be taken as any more than that. It's punching up but since it has to do with public shaming, humiliation, and embarrassment, as well as discussions of transphobia and racism, I am putting it all under a cut in case that's a trigger for folks.
If you want to read about how I'm a good person, this isn't a post about that. And if you want a more deeply considered opinion from a smart person, check out ContraPoints' video about cringe, which a better blogger would have rewatched before wading back into this Discourse.
I have been thinking a lot about cringe, inspired in part by ThoughtSlime and Sophie From Mars' "Cringe Corner" episodes, where they make fun of people with laughably bad publicly stated opinions. It's extremely enjoyable for reasons that I keep skirting around the edge of examining. They go after bad people with power who use their platform to do harm (for the most part; I still have questions about the Rome Is Fake lady, though the mockery in that one is substantially gentler than it is when they go after TERFs). But what does it say about me that I—a once-bullied kid who has to try very hard to be a good person, both professionally, politically, and personally—find mocking anyone to be a fun, cathartic activity?
And not just to make it all about me, but why is cringe even a thing in the first place? What social purpose does it serve, and how does it differ from similar concepts like shame or embarrassment? And how does it overlap with power and privilege?
I have lately been thinking about how many of the Discourses, particularly around Hogwarts: Legacy, are prime examples of cringe. As in, I found myself shouting at a Reddit stranger (look, I am being publicly vulnerable today okay???) that they should feel a bit ashamed for caring more about a game for little children than the rights of trans people and Jews. And then I myself felt a bit ashamed for getting so impassioned on Reddit, a forum where I tend towards coolheaded discussion (no, really).
I am myself a cringe person. As in, I have never been conventionally attractive, I get hyperfixated on interests, I babble word salad, I make jokes that don't land properly. I stick my foot in it a lot. I get called out a fair bit over various things, and that sort of crushing shitty feeling where you've put your foot in it is a very familiar one. While I'm being publicly vulnerable, here's an example:
I once reposted the following dad joke on Facebook. "What did the nonbinary gold prospector say?" "There's gold in them/there hills!" Pretty harmless and cute, I thought, but an Indigenous friend of mine called me out, given the damage that the white lust for minerals has caused and continues to cause Indigenous communities and land. I was like, "oh shit, I'm sorry, would you like me to delete the post or leave it up with your commentary?" She wanted the latter option, and that was that. Later on she apologized for being harsh about it, and I said her callout wasn't that harsh (it wasn't at all) and everything was and remains cool. But there's a reason that exchange occurred to me now—while our friendship and political relationship is great, the actual feeling of cringe, detached from our relationship, lives on, a little free-floating bit of anxiety to occasionally be replayed along with the time everyone in my fifth grade class found out that I'd got my period.
And this is not a bad thing. This makes me just a little bit more careful about what I say and what I repost. I'm a rampant shitposter and like I say, sometimes my jokes don't land, and if you're going to be a rampant shitposter, it is legitimately valuable to have friends who will hold you to account if you unintentionally say something hurtful. Even if you're the most thoughtful person in the world, you're going to fuck up, and that feeling of cringe keeps you learning and questioning the things that you assume on account of your privilege and positionality.
Now for the politics. There was a time when shame was a significant part of political discourse. I have made comments to the effect that The Thick of It is a very upbeat, utopian historical artifact, because a lot of the plotlines involve a politician doing something shameful and losing their job over it. Shame in politics arguably ended when David Cameron fucked a pig and it didn't drive him into hiding for the rest of his life.
You've gotten this far. You deserve a meme. I deserve a Very Special Episode of TTOI about this.
Or it ended when Rob Ford smoked crack on camera. Or whatever your local equivalent is. But it's definitely not a thing anymore. That's why John Tory stepping down as mayor is so baffling to Hogtowners. He fucked a staffer? And resigned? That's so...quaint.
Shame is obviously useful as a political tool. The closest most people get to "democracy" is to cast a ballot every four years for someone who will act as an absolute monarch in the intermediate period. Shame is one of our few tools to reign politicians in when they do terrible things. And now we don't have it anymore. Accordingly we are plagued by fascists with funny hairdos that do as they please, and there's no way to get rid of them because look, you had a chance to vote them out.
Back to Harry Fucking Potter. There was also a time when if you, as an adult, wanted to read a wizard book, there were special editions with more adult-looking covers because it was slightly embarrassing to read a children's book on the subway. (They still exist; I won't link to them but you can Google them.) It's good for people of all ages to enjoy media for all ages, don't get me wrong, but that little bit of cringe that obviously existed back then was a useful corrective. If you are a consumer of children's media, it is making you reflect on what about children's media is appealing. Is it a hunger for a framework where morality is black and white and some adult figure will, at some point, pause the narrative to explain the lesson you're supposed to be getting from it at the end? To be clear—this is a real need and is understandable and everyone deserves a refuge in escapism and fantasy! But that moment of cognitive dissonance is good and helps you learn and evolve. And it's helping make sure that you don't base your entire politics and identity around it.
Today, I regularly encounter the opinion that adult people are being "bullied" for playing the wizard game. I'm sorry, what? A piece of children's media that materially benefits an absolutely toxic woman who uses her extreme wealth to influence her government and culture to pass legislation restricting the rights of an already persecuted minority group? And she owns six castles? The gamers aren't the ones being bullied here. I have a whole other rant about how the term "bullying" has been watered down to the point of meaninglessness but I would argue in the same way that it's impossible for BIPOC to be racist against white people, it's impossible to bully adults for valuing a toy over the basic human rights and physical safety of trans and nonbinary children.
What happens when we, in both subcultural spaces and in the political sphere, lose a sense of cringe? Well, we have events like GamerGate and Sad Puppies. We have grown-ass men voting for Trump out of fear that Big Mommy Hillary is going to take away their video games. We have people basing their politics and identity around their toys. We have lost the tools to say "you are harassing people over silly spaceship books" that would cause people to rejig their perspective and nip the problem in the bud.
As I was rambling about this on Discord, a friend raised an objection: Identifying media as cringe is a slippery slope. "Cringe" as a concept is often aimed at media, like romance novels, that are primarily aimed at women. She said that Sad Puppies would have been no less awful had it occurred over litfic.
My counter to this is twofold. Sad Puppies wouldn't have happened over litfic. You only get something like Sad Puppies happening when there is a sense of out-group identity that needs to be defended. Mainly the type of men who read litfic are other litfic writers and they know they're in the old boys' network. But nerds still have a fundamental belief that they are being persecuted for liking Star Wars, and they must hit back lest they lose their lunch money. Never mind that all of the hugest media properties are "nerd" media—this is about feelings for them, not material conditions.
But let's turn to romance novels, because this is interesting to me. Cringe is deployed as a weapon all the time against romance novels. Ebooks have been a blessing because you don't even need special covers to read romance and erotica on the subway anymore.
I have a lot of friends who write romance and erotica (and do quite well at it!) so while I don't read or write that kind of stuff myself, I'm a little familiar with the community and the drama that goes on in it. And there is drama and problematic shit all the time. But for some reason it doesn't do as much harm outside that community. There's not zero harm, but you don't often see something like Sad Puppies where it spills into electoral politics. Romance, erotica, and fanfic controversies hardly ever break containment. When they do, it's often because they're very funny, like the objectively hilarious Omegaverse lawsuit. So the fact that cringe exists, that assigned-women people maybe feel cringe in a more heightened way, actually makes them behave better. We are socially conditioned—through cringe, though always viewing ourselves as at least slightly shameful and embarrassing—to work out our differences more quietly. Whereas SFF drama, being more male dominated, escapes containment all the time, because no one puts limits on dudes' behaviour.
Accordingly, cringe, while oft painful, serves a valuable social function. It is to keep us humble enough to cooperate and function in society. It's shitty and unpleasant but we need it. We need to embrace and accept our own cringe—not because we should stop liking children's media or video games or whatever it is we like, but because our identity as consumers-of-media should be placed into proper perspective with our identity as political actors and members of communities. We need to take sharpened sticks to overinflated senses of importance, be they our own or that of others.
If you want to read about how I'm a good person, this isn't a post about that. And if you want a more deeply considered opinion from a smart person, check out ContraPoints' video about cringe, which a better blogger would have rewatched before wading back into this Discourse.
I have been thinking a lot about cringe, inspired in part by ThoughtSlime and Sophie From Mars' "Cringe Corner" episodes, where they make fun of people with laughably bad publicly stated opinions. It's extremely enjoyable for reasons that I keep skirting around the edge of examining. They go after bad people with power who use their platform to do harm (for the most part; I still have questions about the Rome Is Fake lady, though the mockery in that one is substantially gentler than it is when they go after TERFs). But what does it say about me that I—a once-bullied kid who has to try very hard to be a good person, both professionally, politically, and personally—find mocking anyone to be a fun, cathartic activity?
And not just to make it all about me, but why is cringe even a thing in the first place? What social purpose does it serve, and how does it differ from similar concepts like shame or embarrassment? And how does it overlap with power and privilege?
I have lately been thinking about how many of the Discourses, particularly around Hogwarts: Legacy, are prime examples of cringe. As in, I found myself shouting at a Reddit stranger (look, I am being publicly vulnerable today okay???) that they should feel a bit ashamed for caring more about a game for little children than the rights of trans people and Jews. And then I myself felt a bit ashamed for getting so impassioned on Reddit, a forum where I tend towards coolheaded discussion (no, really).
I am myself a cringe person. As in, I have never been conventionally attractive, I get hyperfixated on interests, I babble word salad, I make jokes that don't land properly. I stick my foot in it a lot. I get called out a fair bit over various things, and that sort of crushing shitty feeling where you've put your foot in it is a very familiar one. While I'm being publicly vulnerable, here's an example:
I once reposted the following dad joke on Facebook. "What did the nonbinary gold prospector say?" "There's gold in them/there hills!" Pretty harmless and cute, I thought, but an Indigenous friend of mine called me out, given the damage that the white lust for minerals has caused and continues to cause Indigenous communities and land. I was like, "oh shit, I'm sorry, would you like me to delete the post or leave it up with your commentary?" She wanted the latter option, and that was that. Later on she apologized for being harsh about it, and I said her callout wasn't that harsh (it wasn't at all) and everything was and remains cool. But there's a reason that exchange occurred to me now—while our friendship and political relationship is great, the actual feeling of cringe, detached from our relationship, lives on, a little free-floating bit of anxiety to occasionally be replayed along with the time everyone in my fifth grade class found out that I'd got my period.
And this is not a bad thing. This makes me just a little bit more careful about what I say and what I repost. I'm a rampant shitposter and like I say, sometimes my jokes don't land, and if you're going to be a rampant shitposter, it is legitimately valuable to have friends who will hold you to account if you unintentionally say something hurtful. Even if you're the most thoughtful person in the world, you're going to fuck up, and that feeling of cringe keeps you learning and questioning the things that you assume on account of your privilege and positionality.
Now for the politics. There was a time when shame was a significant part of political discourse. I have made comments to the effect that The Thick of It is a very upbeat, utopian historical artifact, because a lot of the plotlines involve a politician doing something shameful and losing their job over it. Shame in politics arguably ended when David Cameron fucked a pig and it didn't drive him into hiding for the rest of his life.
You've gotten this far. You deserve a meme. I deserve a Very Special Episode of TTOI about this.
Or it ended when Rob Ford smoked crack on camera. Or whatever your local equivalent is. But it's definitely not a thing anymore. That's why John Tory stepping down as mayor is so baffling to Hogtowners. He fucked a staffer? And resigned? That's so...quaint.
Shame is obviously useful as a political tool. The closest most people get to "democracy" is to cast a ballot every four years for someone who will act as an absolute monarch in the intermediate period. Shame is one of our few tools to reign politicians in when they do terrible things. And now we don't have it anymore. Accordingly we are plagued by fascists with funny hairdos that do as they please, and there's no way to get rid of them because look, you had a chance to vote them out.
Back to Harry Fucking Potter. There was also a time when if you, as an adult, wanted to read a wizard book, there were special editions with more adult-looking covers because it was slightly embarrassing to read a children's book on the subway. (They still exist; I won't link to them but you can Google them.) It's good for people of all ages to enjoy media for all ages, don't get me wrong, but that little bit of cringe that obviously existed back then was a useful corrective. If you are a consumer of children's media, it is making you reflect on what about children's media is appealing. Is it a hunger for a framework where morality is black and white and some adult figure will, at some point, pause the narrative to explain the lesson you're supposed to be getting from it at the end? To be clear—this is a real need and is understandable and everyone deserves a refuge in escapism and fantasy! But that moment of cognitive dissonance is good and helps you learn and evolve. And it's helping make sure that you don't base your entire politics and identity around it.
Today, I regularly encounter the opinion that adult people are being "bullied" for playing the wizard game. I'm sorry, what? A piece of children's media that materially benefits an absolutely toxic woman who uses her extreme wealth to influence her government and culture to pass legislation restricting the rights of an already persecuted minority group? And she owns six castles? The gamers aren't the ones being bullied here. I have a whole other rant about how the term "bullying" has been watered down to the point of meaninglessness but I would argue in the same way that it's impossible for BIPOC to be racist against white people, it's impossible to bully adults for valuing a toy over the basic human rights and physical safety of trans and nonbinary children.
What happens when we, in both subcultural spaces and in the political sphere, lose a sense of cringe? Well, we have events like GamerGate and Sad Puppies. We have grown-ass men voting for Trump out of fear that Big Mommy Hillary is going to take away their video games. We have people basing their politics and identity around their toys. We have lost the tools to say "you are harassing people over silly spaceship books" that would cause people to rejig their perspective and nip the problem in the bud.
As I was rambling about this on Discord, a friend raised an objection: Identifying media as cringe is a slippery slope. "Cringe" as a concept is often aimed at media, like romance novels, that are primarily aimed at women. She said that Sad Puppies would have been no less awful had it occurred over litfic.
My counter to this is twofold. Sad Puppies wouldn't have happened over litfic. You only get something like Sad Puppies happening when there is a sense of out-group identity that needs to be defended. Mainly the type of men who read litfic are other litfic writers and they know they're in the old boys' network. But nerds still have a fundamental belief that they are being persecuted for liking Star Wars, and they must hit back lest they lose their lunch money. Never mind that all of the hugest media properties are "nerd" media—this is about feelings for them, not material conditions.
But let's turn to romance novels, because this is interesting to me. Cringe is deployed as a weapon all the time against romance novels. Ebooks have been a blessing because you don't even need special covers to read romance and erotica on the subway anymore.
I have a lot of friends who write romance and erotica (and do quite well at it!) so while I don't read or write that kind of stuff myself, I'm a little familiar with the community and the drama that goes on in it. And there is drama and problematic shit all the time. But for some reason it doesn't do as much harm outside that community. There's not zero harm, but you don't often see something like Sad Puppies where it spills into electoral politics. Romance, erotica, and fanfic controversies hardly ever break containment. When they do, it's often because they're very funny, like the objectively hilarious Omegaverse lawsuit. So the fact that cringe exists, that assigned-women people maybe feel cringe in a more heightened way, actually makes them behave better. We are socially conditioned—through cringe, though always viewing ourselves as at least slightly shameful and embarrassing—to work out our differences more quietly. Whereas SFF drama, being more male dominated, escapes containment all the time, because no one puts limits on dudes' behaviour.
Accordingly, cringe, while oft painful, serves a valuable social function. It is to keep us humble enough to cooperate and function in society. It's shitty and unpleasant but we need it. We need to embrace and accept our own cringe—not because we should stop liking children's media or video games or whatever it is we like, but because our identity as consumers-of-media should be placed into proper perspective with our identity as political actors and members of communities. We need to take sharpened sticks to overinflated senses of importance, be they our own or that of others.
