What is cringe?

SalmaoneSlaamper

SalmaoneSlaamper

I just got internet!
kiwifarms.net
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Jan 21, 2021
Forgive me if this is cringe, but I have been thinking about what makes something cringe to others and myself?

I have begin to think it is a combination of stereotypical things we see daily as we pass through our day. What makes these occasionally cringe moments funny? Will anything be cringe anymore once we define where our ideas of it comes from?
 
Whatever makes you cringe its cringe

Example: this thread its making me cringe, ergo its cringe

And OP a faggot, as always
 
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"Cringe" is just another word for empathetic embarrassment. Embarrassment is related to the idea of social threat, and empathy is a peculiar concept wherein emotions and sensations believed to be experienced by other (generally sapient) entities are mirrored in effect within one's own psyche as a tool for understanding and connection.

Cringe becomes funny when its status as cringe has been acknowledged and accepted by the majority of observers, thus turning it "relatable" and in some cases even "wholesome".

Things will continue to be cringe no matter what due to uncertainty of how others will react.
While one can disarm cringe to a great extent by using mechanisms such as humor to acknowledge and frame a given situation as more socially palatable, events outside one's control will continue to involve social threat and therefore will be cringe.

As an example, here is relatively popular forum user @Null engaging in "cringe", however due to the context and his reputation this is accepted by his audience to be normal:



I hope this post will be of help in the future.
 
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Uberpenguin said:
"Cringe" is just another word for empathetic embarrassment. Embarrassment is related to the idea of social threat, and empathy is a peculiar concept wherein emotions and sensations believed to be experienced by other (generally sapient) entities are mirrored in effect within one's own psyche as a tool for understanding and connection.

Cringe becomes funny when its status as cringe has been acknowledged and accepted by the majority of observers, thus turning it "relatable" and in some cases even "wholesome".

Things will continue to be cringe no matter what due to uncertainty of how others will react.
While one can disarm cringe to a great extent by using mechanisms such as humor to acknowledge and frame a given situation as more socially palatable, events outside one's control will continue to involve social threat and therefore will be cringe.

As an example, here is relatively popular forum user @Null engaging in "cringe", however due to the context and his reputation this is accepted by his audience to be normal:

View attachment 3044556

I hope this post will be of help in the future.
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Holy shit, that audio! :lit: Which stream was this from?
 
We cover some major, prominent fuck ups and weirdos on kiwifarms who produce 'cringe' content on a regular basis, so this post isn't about Chris Chan or Tooter or any other established big name lolcows. I'm talking about the random unknowns at brony conventions who'd end up online after sperging out on the dancefloor or harassing voice actresses with creepy sexual questions. There was the happy meal brony, the unboxing of the elite practical katana. The 'hey baby girl' Briona guy. You were getting to see people do cringey, spergy BS in the wild, spontaneously, not knowing they were going to be immortalized and subject to ridicule.

A few years back cringe content seemed to shift to a more political context, BLM nuts, SJW's and troons. A search for brony cringe brings up results from five or six years ago. You had the bald Die Cis Scum girl, but there was so much more out there than that. I don't think this warrants a new thread, but does anybody else think we've seen a decline in quality of autistes and cringe content?
 
It's an annoying new buzzword.

ToroidalBoat said:
I've mentioned it before, but "cringe". Used to usually mean a physical reaction, and it wasn't used as much.

In Current Year, it's overused and seems to be yet another way of saying "what I don't like" or "wrongthink".

(also one does not always instantly win an argument by calling the opposing view "cringe")
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Anything anyone does that is not conducive to helping them (and insofar as you're in their good graces, you) get hard cash or hard power .

Anyone with a tinge of ruthlessness in them - anyone with functioning antennae for the subtle mechanisms of real power and real status - will experience gay people as cringe, women as cringe, autistic people as cringe, old people as cringe, blacks as cringe, and religious fundies/other cultists as cringe.

They correctly intuit that these people act in ways that are both a cause and consequence of them being less powerful in the grand scheme of things.
 
It is generally agreed that overly "insisting upon yourself" while having no grounds for it is the main source of cringe.
 
Michael Pemulis said:
It is generally agreed that overly "insisting upon yourself" while having no grounds for it is the main source of cringe.
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In the end it doesn't matter if you have extensive evidence of and watertight reasoning for the point you're trying to make. There are people who've collated extensive evidence and made step-by-step logical arguments to back up consensus-reality-shattering conclusions of every stripe (whether about the financial system, religion, race, gender, or whatever other hot potato issue.) People just cringe at them for being tryhard cranks with no real power to affect or change things. They are cringe.

In the end, as I said, it all comes down to power. People's beliefs and attitudes to almost anything are dictated largely by the extent to which the people espousing those beliefs and attitudes have them in their pocket or have some dirt on them. Why, for instance, does Stephen Fry, a shit-tier thinker, petty credit-card-stealing maniac, and barely-closeted pederast (sources: 1, 2, 3) have a massive followership? Because he comes from the British establishment; he went to the right schools and made the right friends. This is also why the Catholic Church has lived and thrived for 2000+ years, and why the Church of Scientology still stands. They collect dirt on people.

"You tell me where a man gets his corn-pone, and I'll tell you what his opinions is.' I can never forget it. It was deeply impressed upon me."
- Mark Twain, quoting a preacher from his childhood.
 
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