As promised, today we’re going to discuss the importance of being cringe. First let us define cringe. The traditional use of cringe is as a verb: “to bend one’s head and body in fear or in a servile manner”. In colloquial slang it is more akin to second hand embarrassment or used to describe a person’s behavior that left you feeling uncomfortable, awkward or embarrassed (often for them, not by them) an important distinction to make I think. Amazon Prime’s recent price increase is cringe given they reported record profits during the pandemic and everyone knows it’s a horribly unethical company that we should all stop using but collectively we are hooked by it and we can’t stop. Bezos is absolute cringe. More recently, Kim Kardashian telling women to just get up off their asses and work is cringe for reasons I do not need to explain.
The cringe I’m interested in exploring is more specifically related to sharing oneself or one’s art or business or whatever really, just something you make… on social media. There inevitably has to be a starting point when you and maybe your partner or your best friend are your only fans, but nonetheless you are supposed to promote the shit out of your creation with the confidence of Jared Leto playing Adam Neumann in #WeCrashed. For some this comes naturally, but to many of us it’s like trying to learn a new language after the age of 25 when your brain and body stops growing and you literally begin to decompose. I’m in the new language after 25 camp if you hadn’t already guessed. Prior to last week, the last time I announced some kind of intention to share my work was August 2018 and since then I’ve posted maybe 5 times. In a rare moment of revelation courtesy of Instagram, I saw the below post and it felt like one of those divine timing things where I was receiving the message that I needed to hear at the right time.
The fear of being cringe is rooted in the discomfort of vulnerability. The hard part about sharing your work is conjuring up the courage to sit with the vulnerability that it takes to say “hey this thing I made is worth your time, please look”. And more often than not, if the art is truthful, there is a part of you in it. And by sharing it you are opening that tender part of you up to the critique and savagery of the general internet.
The idea of someone thinking that I am embarrassing myself or that I am desperate for attention and my work sucks, is for me one of the worst possible things that a person could think about me. Millennials, or maybe just me, internalized messages of our youth that warned against being braggadocious, that being humble was an admirable quality and that nobody liked an arrogant fool. Then the 2010s happened and all of life was fair game for curation and suddenly it was the norm to share even the most mundane details of your life. It was a time of constantly saying “look at me!” And I often found myself cringing.
The more time I spend with this idea, the more I think that maybe it is more of a me problem than a millennial problem. But one thing worth pointing out is that Gen Z grew up with all of this being normal.
They consumed a constant stream of curated images and their peers shared nascent creative endeavors that previously would have been unbeknownst to anyone outside of their inner circle. So to them I don’t think being considered arrogant or vain carries the same weight as it does with millennials. To paraphrase a young TikToker who recently proclaimed “self deprecation is out, only God complexes now” I think characterizes the brazen attitude of Gen Z against the backdrop of the self deprecating faux humble millennial.
Even the extra cringe and thankfully on it’s way out, “I did a thing”, usually used when talking about a major life update like marriage, babies or starting a business carries a weight of bashfulness or the energy of I don’t want to be too big. Gen Z is teaching us that in 2022 we are giving credit where credit is due and celebrating all of our accomplishments, no matter the size.
So why is it important to be cringe? Because if you are not willing to be vulnerable and share yourself or your creations, then nobody will ever see it or know that you made that thing. There are people out there self-publishing books of questionable quality and selling them on Amazon and calling themselves professional authors. I feel that is cringe. But like the shirt and the meme says “they don’t make statues of critics” so what does it really matter if someone perceives me as cringe? It doesn’t.
And it comes with the territory of wanting to engage with people about my work. I have to be willing to receive criticism even if some of it may be unwarranted and just downright mean. People have always been mean and bullying is a tale old as time. Everyone starts as no one. Besides the children of the rich and famous— but I think the feeling is universal that they are in another league and we can just let them be. Stop comparing ourselves to them.
What I’m getting at here is that it is essential to experience cringe moments if you want to be a creative person in 2022 and you want to maybe one day support yourself financially with your art. You have to promote yourself with reckless abandon. Sometimes I see people just selling the shit out of themselves and after working with them or knowing them personally I realize that they are just winging it like everyone else. They were just brave enough to put themselves forward as the expert or the best person for the job.
While there is a lot more to creativity and art than social media engagement and financial gain, what lies underneath is still the same ancient desire for community and self expression that our ancestors held. In many ways it is now easier and faster to experience that connection with an audience and so it stings extra when it takes time. It’s so easy to feel like a failure if the results aren’t astonishing right out the gate.
The amount of people that I’ve followed for years with envy that they get to just share their thoughts with the internet and somehow people connect with it… well I have realized that the only thing stopping me from being them is my own fear of being cringe. Of being looked upon poorly by my peers. My friends thinking that I seem desperate is actually a harder pill to swallow than strangers thinking it so. We all cringe at influencers hawking the latest hair growth or tummy trimming vitamin so whose to say they won’t do the same when I’m saying “hey look at me, I write!” But it’s a risk I’m willing to take.