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One Nation, Under Cringe
Two weeks before he became Kamala Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz went on MSNBC and called Trump and the Republican Party “weird”—a tactic that seemed to genuinely embarrass Republicans and is now being considered one of the “most effective” strategies the Democrats have tried.
Maybe, without even knowing it, Walz tapped into the internet’s obsession with cringe.
Perhaps it began when 34-year-old Rachel Parris, now known as the Green Dress Lady, went viral on TikTok in a pleather dress and Michael Kors heels to scold Gen Z for wearing sneakers to the club, only to start backlash so strong that many began to worry about getting bullied for wearing their own orthopedic heels to the club. Perhaps it began when people began swapping out their blue razz lemonade icy grape vapes for straight cigarettes after flavored vapes became equated with decorumless children smoking Oompa Loompa ejaculate from a candy USB port. Eyebrow blindness, blush blindness, outfit blindness. The fear of cringe has swallowed our nation whole.
As the presidential election steamrolls on, fear of appearing cringe has set the public mood. Look at Amber Rose’s appearance at the Republican National Convention, rapping to a truly godawful parody of “Ice Ice Baby” over a low-budget video. Or the fact that Elon Musk’s attempt to wrangle Twitter has been corny as fuck, from the name to the logo. Let’s also never forget the embarrassment of the Democratic Party kneeling on the ground in kente cloth stoles as though it was some kind of groundbreaking political statement.
Anything is at risk of being diagnosed with cringe now. Skinny jeans are cringe. Being 25 years old is cringe. Enjoying talk shows is cringe. Sending someone a superlike on a dating app is cringe. The laughing-crying emoji is cringe. Nothing shuts a trend down faster than making it embarrassing. “Early cringe culture was about empathy and secondhand embarrassment,” Kaitlyn Tiffany wrote in the Atlantic. “Today, being ‘cringe’ is a serious infraction.”
It only makes sense. Shame is an emotion that’s already deeply ingrained in the human experience, particularly after the lockdown. Covid-19 has directly affected the rise of depression and anxiety diagnoses, particularly among women and low-income earners, according to the National Institutes of Health. Not to mention, we live in a world of increasing panopticontent, where everyone is always peripherally on display, poised to be captured on someone’s camera and shared with the world at any given moment. Constantly being perceived opens up many more opportunities to worry about what you project to the world.
The fight with cringe is one that solely exists with the chronically anxious, the terminally online, the ones who spin out after replying to the ticket taker’s wishes to enjoy the movie with “You too!”
Millennials ask if it’s okay to wear ankle socks still, despite the fact that some have labeled it as cringe (it’s fine). Gen Xers ask if it’s fine to still send a reaction GIF as a reply to a text (it is not). There is an element of brain worminess to it, but I hesitate to say that it’s solely a problem of generational warfare ignited by Gen Z. The fight with cringe is one that solely exists with the chronically anxious, the terminally online, the ones who spin out after replying to the ticket taker’s wishes to enjoy the movie with “You too!”
And now: Republicans.
But just because it feels like heightened emotion doesn’t mean there aren’t real impacts. A report released by Hinge in February showed that more than half of Gen Z worries about cringe while dating, and is 50 percent more likely than millennials to delay responding so they don’t seem overeager. Products are peddled on social media addressing problems that haven’t appeared yet—anti-wrinkle straws, retinol serums, red light therapy masks. Microtrends like the House of Sunny green spotted dress cause more buildup in landfills when the item of clothing is deemed humiliating to wear.
Even in the White House, President Joe Biden’s inability and seeming disinclination to connect with voters on issues they care about—like reproductive rights, rent reform, and universal health care—made his presence as a leader completely cringe to both the right and left wings. The digital fight between Trump and Biden found its way in Dark Brandon memes and Freudian slips about Nazism on Trump’s end, as each one tried to make the other look more embarrassing. Meanwhile, former Republican Rep. George Santos, famously ousted from his House role because of his many campaign fund misappropriations, said he would be running as an independent this year because the GOP was “too embarrassing.”
Cringe reflects the most surface-level nihilism that we feel bubbling in our society—an existential dread and humiliation for everything that is happening.
Our world is so embarrassing right now, and the lexicon reflects that. Where “cool” or “dope” served earlier generations, cringe, mid, sus, glazed, and ick serve us now. The promising sheen of democracy is deeply in decline as government officials have failed time and time again to deliver, ignoring constituent cries for an end to their roles in conflicts like the war in Gaza and ballooning costs of living. The “uncommitted” movement earlier this year spoke volumes to the mood of young people, many of whom refused to vote for out-of-touch (and thereby cringe) candidates that didn’t reflect their values. It’s far more embarrassing to vote for someone because of some false premise of “lesser evils” when the evil was never rooted in one supposed “better” party. Many young people hesitate to have children for fear of global threats like climate change and rising inflation that loom so close to our futures. Everything is small and expensive and we are burning out thinking about ourselves. Cringe reflects the most surface-level nihilism that we feel bubbling in our society—an existential dread and humiliation for everything that is happening.
“10 days ago Tim Walz was more or less just some guy but then he called republicans weird on TV and all of us were like ‘put this queen in the Oval Office’ and it… worked,” one said.
But here’s the secret: Cringe is a goofy and ultimately unproductive feeling, and many are learning to break its shackles. “I am cringe, but I am free,” people caption photos of goats and cows staring into the ocean. Fear is exhausting, and and we need to lean into the ultimate reality that in an embarrassing world, we too will have to be embarrassing.
“Liking a tweet then unliking it bc it’s cringe then reliking it bc I remember no one can see it,” one wrote after X (formerly Twitter) removed the public likes feed.
Consider Vice President Kamala Harris, who, until this summer, didn’t have any notable public persona beyond being slightly cringe. It was only when her coconut-tree mantra began to make its rounds on TikTok that she entered the spotlight as a likable government official. Charli XCX only added fuel to the flames when she tweeted, “kamala IS brat,” spurring even more Brat-related Harris memes and pulling the vice president out from the prison of cringe and into the bright green limelight of camp. Her confusing platitudes like “What can be, unburdened by what has been” could have been considered pretentious if not made endearingly funny by an ironic social media standom.
This election is undoubtedly going to be embarrassing for all involved, and even more humiliating as politicians attempt to appeal to voters in ways akin to the horror of Hillary Clinton dabbing on The Ellen DeGeneres Show. But we must focus on what could be, unburdened by what has been. It is no good to squander in shame when we should really be in the club.
