Is there anything that isn't cringe nowadays? It seems that folks might gang up on you for liking a book, a sports team, or a band they deem "cringe." Something cuts deep inside your soul when you read a comment like "Imagine being a fan of X in the big 2026" followed by the wilted flower emoji.
How do we decide what's cringey and what's cool? Sometimes, it seems that the fear of appearing cringe stops people from enjoying their lives with as much whimsy as they can. The younger generations are particularly worried, as 56% of Gen Z feel anxious about rejection during Hinge dates. Their biggest worry? Doing something their date will think is cringy or embarrassing.
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In her piece for Mother Jones titled "One Nation, Under Cringe," writer Steffi Cao observed that the current generation's lexicon revolves around words used to describe embarrassing behaviors and shame people for them. "Where 'cool' or 'dope' served earlier generations, cringe, mid, sus, glazed, and ick serve us now," she writes.
Indeed, Gen Z and Gen Alpha might be the generations so preoccupied with not being cringe that they're missing out on the best parts of life. Online, more and more people are calling out those who participate in and cultivate "cringe culture."
For example, one Redditor recently argued that "the concept of cringe culture completely ruined creativity and self-expression." Under the "cringe culture" tag on TikTok, you can find others talking about how cringe culture is making everything boring and is fueling the rise of anti-intellectualism.
You might think that this is a problem only for the chronically online. However, experts are noticing that the repercussions of "cringe culture" are severely impacting today's youth. In an interview for Australia's ABC News, bestselling author and NYU professor of Creative Writing Ocean Vuong talked about how young people are afraid to try being poets and writers because it's perceived as cringe.
"There is a kind of surveillance culture around social media," he said. "This 'cringe culture' is 'I don't want to be perceived as trying and having an effortful attempt at my dreams.'" As a teacher, Vuong finds this horrifying: "They are absolutely scared of judgment. And so, in fact, they perform cynicism because cynicism can be misread, as it often is, as intelligence."
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Interestingly, sincerity seems to be really scary nowadays. Young people seem to like and care about things, but only ironically or in a weirdly detached way. In cringe culture, everything is embarrassing: being in a fandom, trying out a new hobby, and sometimes, even love. How else can we explain the recent "Having a boyfriend is embarrassing" trend?
The key to conquering this collective aversion to cringe might be the realization that we all do embarrassing things. Apparently, being embarrassed can bring people closer. According to a 2012 study, people find those who show embarrassment more trustworthy and pro-social. Although the embarrassment might seem unbearable in the moment and shortly after, it can actually work as a bonding mechanism.
Essentially, when we do something stupid and get embarrassed, we're signaling to other people that we care what they think. They, in turn, feel sympathy for us and might feel the need to reassure us. Evolutionary psychologists say that we adapted to feel embarrassment as a way to correct our behavior in communities.
