After this morning, I’m convinced it’s a way to control us.
I was waiting in a line this AM for bagels. Place was going to open in 30 minutes and always had a line. This morning, the entire time I waited in line there was a very expensive AMG with its car alarm going off over and over, 6 or 7 times while we waited. People were pissed and complaining every time.
Eventually the dude came out of another coffee shop and I told him he needs to get his car alarm checked. He says “fuck off, it’s just my kids dude, who pissed in your coffee”. So this fucker had left his kids in the car while he got himself coffee, let the alarm blare 3 feet from a line of people, including kids.
I walked up to his window, looked him in the eye and told him he was being a dick, and should be more considerate to people in line, and maybe disable the alarm if he’s leaving his kids in the car. He just peeled out of there with a middle finger up.
The only people who said anything to me was “that was such cringe bro” and “lighten up man”.
So, despite people being pissed, and despite someone calmly trying to ask someone for grace, the only people who cared were the ones who thought I was unreasonable. So, it’s more acceptable to be a dick than it is to call someone out for it.
Continue to call them out! I physically can not my throat closes up, do it for me! Thank you! He was being a dick!
If he doesn’t care about risking his kids life, there is no use reasoning with him, he is already sub human.
That cringe feeling can also be a self-defense mechanism. Cringe at yourself so you don’t do the thing and make society turn on you.
The solution is to find people you can be open with. They ARE out there, I promise. For every subcategory of “weird”, even the ones society hates.
(Of course, as you get more and more into “societally hated” territory, you’ll need to find more and more fringe platforms to exist on. But they do exist. That’s probably the most wonderful and most important thing about the internet.)
– Frost
No it is a real emotion that I experienced well before I ever had a name for it. Sympathetic embracement is another word for it. The People Deciding that being happy is “cringe” are just miserable nihilists.
Don’t get rid of the part of you that makes you cringe, get rid of the part of you that cringes.
Cringe is when your memory tells you that something is not good while another part wants to do it.
The part that cringes is awareness itself. Do you mean that or do you perceive cringe differently?
IMO cringe is when trained social rules conflict with natural and authentic expression.
what if i only find hypernormativity cringe?
You joke, but ‘cringe culture’ always has been and always will be a tool for the dominant elements of reactionary culture to reinforce normativity, punishing and othering anyone who doesn’t conform.
Often, yeah. Sometimes cringe is the result of trying too hard to be normal tho.
That’s exactly what I’d expect a bogan to say.
The kids care. Look up “zombie concert crowds” - the kids don’t want to be “cringe” so they won’t DANCE AT CONCERTS. It’s wild to see
Watching a video or two of the phenomenon made me feel funny in my stomach
My experience has been that genZ absolutely loves to mosh and crowd surf, even when the music or situation would not typically support these actions. Like, I’ve seen kids jumping off the stage over and over again in a small venue with like 75 people who are getting increasingly annoyed by it. I’ve seen them do the “red sea” mosh thing to chill indie songs.
Honestly I appreciate the enthusiasm, but the crowd surfing thing in particular gets super tedious in the aforementioned scenarios.
So I just tried looking up “zombie concert crowds” and can’t find anything remotely similar to what you were talking about.
And like every generation before you, instead of recognizing the natural differences from one generation to the next, you act like it’s some strange spectacle. Hey maybe dancing at concerts isn’t their culture. It’s that simple. It’s not wild, they’re not zombies, and who cares if they think dancing is cringe. Let them not dance. That’s their new normal, grandpa.
Dancing has been part of every human culture throughout all of history, though? It’s not like choosing skinny or baggy jeans. And it seems to be fear-based, not want-based.
I think you’d have a very hard time verifying that.
And even if it were true, so what? That doesn’t mean everyone who’s born from then on has to dance too.
Findigs of music instruments and depictions of rituals and movements from every era and inhabitated continent seems to verify it. Babies dancing before they are even able to walk without assistance seems to verify it.
No one is trying to force you personally or any one individual to dance. But we are allowed to wonder and/or worry at what has made one generation fear doing something that seems so innately human throughout evolution for millions of years.
Imagine being so learned about the diversity of the world and then using it to illustrate why people who differ from what you think is normal are some kind of sick.
I can’t believe you think anyone should take your argument seriously here. Adios.
are some kind of sick.
Ah… I see you read some things into my texts that certainly weren’t there. I hope you’re in a better headspace and able to read me with more positive intent in the future.
Ciao.
I weep for those who feel their natural humanity eroded because oligarchs can’t stop smushing cameras into everything
There is a choice to not live this way, and to live a more true and grounded experience. That doesn’t involve surveillance state created by your classmates
This is not normal
nAtUrAl HuMaNiTy lol
Literally everything humans do is natural, we are part of nature. There is nothing in existence that isn’t. You’re appealing to a null standard.
The issue I see with that is that it defines “natural” in a way that is both useless, because it literally applies to anything in existence, and doesn’t fit the way people generally use it, that being something more like “how things are when they have not been significantly altered by people”. Under a more typical usage, human activity isn’t natural by definition, not because humans are special in some way but just because the term natural has been arbitrarily created to describe everything except that activity.
You just described exactly why it’s a useless word to throw out there when trying to make any kind of actually rational argument about human behavior. Every time someone stands up and says “natural” at this point we all already know that person does not understand nature and is likely appealing to something supernatural. So as soon as someone pulls out that tired old yarn they get ridicule from me. If they want to be taken seriously, they need to be honest with themselves and with everyone else about what they’re really about and what they really believe, not hide behind weasel-y language and pretenses of naturalism.
I feel sorry for you
And I feel sorry for anyone in a position for you to teach them this nonsense. But shit in one hand and be sorry in the other and see which hand fills up first.
Not so sure about this one as it depends on both the genre and the band. I went to 3+ shows a month all through college and there was only dancing at probably 1/3 of them
Unironically, yes. Someone using the word says everything about themselves rather than anyone else. The very thought of being uninhibited or “weird” makes them viscerally recoil, because they lack the strength and self-confidence to be open.
Its a long watch, but very much worth it IMHO.
Talks a lot about cringe and where that reaction can come from and why its worth pushing past
I care. Because other people’s perceptions of me have a real impact on my life. It impacts the jobs I might get, the people I might date, the parties I might get invited to, and the people who might want to be my friends.
The thing about being weird and quirky is that it is art - and bad art is not appealing to almost anyone. A good “quirkiness” needs to hang together - it needs to have good execution, an awareness of the social norms around it even if it is breaking them. And the quirky person must play the role they have set for themselves - either as a deliberate act of art, or else by choosing to emphasize those features of themselves which naturally manifest most readily. And, doing this well, you can become a more appealing, unique, or endearing person.
But that doesn’t mean that every impulse you have needs to be expressed at every time. Being the 35 year old in the IT department who wears a Naruto headband might be quirky but… why? There is a common cultural understanding that doing this is in bad taste - so even if you have other coworkers who like Naruto who you may very well like to be friends with, they will avoid you, because you are demonstrating an inability to either understand or abide by common social norms.
Which is what cringe is - similar to how something can feel painfully hot to warn us that we will get burned if we touch it, cringe is a feeling of pain to warn us that we will get hurt socially if we get too close to the source of pain. It is your mind-body telling you that this person is dangerous to your social standing in whatever group you are a part of.
Hence, Naruto-headband-guy has a quite poor work life. He may have some people who are friendly with him - but no real friends. Few, if any, more experienced coworkers want to mentor him. His supervisor is likely not very fond of him. And as a result, he is typically put on the worse projects, is never promoted, and rarely gets pay raises. Of course, maybe he just doesn’t care about any of those things - but it seems difficult to imagine someone happy to take a $30k pay cut for the sake of a minor fashion accessory.
how much is big normal paying you
cringe.
The cropping on this makes it incredibly frustrating to watch and takes away so much of the humor
