Cringe is suddenly everywhere, again. Viral reels intentionally aim to cause that twinge of second-hand awkwardness or palatable discomfort. Their weapons are bad song covers, poor attempts at dance challenges, weird gestures, sounds and voices.
In what has been called the year of reclaiming the cringe, a wave of viral memes also champions the emotion, encouraging people to stop posing self-consciously and instead showcase their most authentic selves.
An introverted cow from 2021 is staring at the ocean, and the words “I’m cringe, but I’m free”. A more recent example is a challenge that started trending in November 2022 called Ending The Video When We Cringe. It invites people, two at a time, to outdo each other with silly gestures, movements and sound effects, until at least one person can’t continue.
Popstar Taylor Swift also advised New York University (NYU) students to “learn to live with the cringe” in her speech at the 2022 graduation ceremony in May.
Like most trends in pop culture, we’ve been here before. The idea of cringe content online goes back as far as social media platforms. Reddit has had cringe discussion boards since its inception in 2005. The Aughts also saw the creation of platforms like cringeworthy.net, dedicated to those moments that make a person want to disappear (walking around with toilet paper sticking out of your pants, scones being called “biscuits with fruit” at a business meeting).
The earliest viral cringe content in the Internet era can be found on YouTube channels such as Miranda Sings, created in 2008 by Colin Ballinger. She still performs as Miranda, a caricature of a self-absorbed, pretentious off-key singer who can’t. Can’t sing, dance, scat, and intelligently offers misleading opinions and meaningless advice. The channel now has 10.8 million subscribers, and comes from “Haters Back Off”.
The 2006 escapades of six-year-old Fred Feaglehorn’s fantasy of a dysfunctional family were created by 13-year-old Lucas Cruikshank. It was the first channel to hit one million subscribers on the platform. It included videos of a hyperactive boy being rejected by a crush with a loud voice, singing about his day and missing medication that helped him “function normally”.
Long before that, cringe was widely considered the theme of the world’s first reality show, Candid Camera (1948-2014). The popular TV series often involved the host playing pranks on unsuspecting people in public places. Escalators will trap a shopper; The pin breaks when it hits the bowling alley. How does one react when something trivial goes unexpectedly, embarrassingly wrong? People’s reactions—and the surprise factor of never knowing whether they’ll scream, laugh, cry, or just walk away on their knees—played a big part in the format’s success.
The format of a TV camera following people in the real world will, of course, soon look very different. The cringe-worthy artist went from attacking stranger to willing, knowing participant.
Rishi Negi, CEO of Endemol Shine India, which produces reality shows like Bigg Boss, MasterChef India, says, “Reality shows have allowed people to show their reality – the good, the bad and the ugly – on screen, The Great Indian Laughter Challenge and The Voice India, among others. “In a world where social media constantly forces us to present a perfect version of ourselves, reality programming shows people a side they don’t see … how people perform under pressure or in strange situations.”
Such programs have also pivoted from comedy to cringe, from comic to cringe, a parallel set of fantasy TV shows such as Augusts (the earliest include Big Brother, launched in 1999, and How to Marry a Millionaire, launched in 2000). , embarrassing scenarios and a joke-style story. Think The Office (UK, 2001-03), created by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, and Curb Your Enthusiasm (2000-), created by and starring Seinfeld co-creator Larry David.
The current wave can be traced back to TV’s successor, streaming platforms. Second-hand embarrassment is a major theme in Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag (2016–19), a brilliant dark comedy that follows a grief-stricken, fourth-wall-breaking, woman as she tries to heal over two seasons. More recently, the Netflix show Girls5eva (co-created by Tina Fey; first released in 2021 and streaming now on Netflix), through a comedy, takes a grim and painful look at the boy and girl band culture of 1990s America. About four former girl band members are in the process of reuniting and making a comeback.
Women are now effective and fake effective; Their former agent is still peddling the dubious talent of the missing youth. The cringe is perfectly captured in the theme song taken from one of the girl band Fantasy’s biggest hits. “Five times will be famous; four-ever too short cause,” go the lyrics to the catchy pop tune. “The three-gather will be famous, because it is one rather than the two-gather.”
At least some of the laughs come before Vines because we’ve all hummed along to lyrics that were almost as bad.
Cringe as freedom, the outrageous move by a generation of young people who grew up in their own personal spotlight, is new. It’s also liberating for the audience, because it often reflects a small fear somewhat universally, played by people who have overcome that fear, says comedian Aditi Mittal. No one knew the fear of walking into the gym with pants on… Except for the reels, everyone has a good laugh about it. Fear of sneezing on the conference room table, but hey, stuff happens.
Mittal added, there has always been a huge market for extreme entertainment. But how we hate has evolved from insulting to kind. A culture that embraces the cringe rejects the idea of weaponizing it; When the audience laughs, the idea is that they do so out of compassion and empathy. “This generation grew up afraid to come off as a cringe. Now they own it,” Mittal says. “They’re choosing to express themselves and represent themselves regardless of the judgment it might bring.” I’m a ring, so I’m free.