Cringe exists to reinforce norms. The “funny” part of jokes are so often normative, that I suspect it’s integral to comedy. Comedy seems to always make a statement about how things ought to be, enforcing social norms and spreading views. Cringe is the most ugly version of it because it’s most clearly about social norms and attitudes. We find things “cringe” because of social norms.
When I saw trans people and crossdressers in media, they were portrayed as something cringe worthy, disgusting, and sometimes dangerous. Those people were villainous and gross in ways I already understood as disgusting. They were dirty morally and physically, while “normal” people were clean and benevolent. Same with other marginalized groups. You cringe at disgusting things, and we were conditioned to cringe at minorities. This wasn’t done consciously most of the time as they were just repeating what was learned.
I avoid cringe comedy, and only use cringe humor for actually immoral behavior. Anime itself isn’t cringe, only the creepy and harmful parts of it. Furries aren’t cringe, only the ones that abuse animals. Unless the thing is inherently bad for its own sake, I think it shouldn’t be cringe. Different or unfamiliar things shouldn’t be cringe unless they’re actually bad, and bad things that are familiar should be cringed at more.
I very much agree, but I believe an important part of drawing this distinction is not using the word “cringe”, since, as I said, that makes it easy for people who don’t care to draw that distinction to hear you say “men who are upset that they can’t find a real life woman who actually looks like an anime girl are cringe”, completely miss the point, and respond with “yeah, i know. anime is so cringe. can you believe there are people who naruto run in the halls at my school? their growth has been stunted.” One of these things is genuinely damaging to both that incel and every woman he will ever interact with, and the other is behavior deviant from the norm that people are put off by, which at absolute worst will result in the anime enjoyer running into something or someone because they weren’t looking where they were going.
Since the word “cringe” is already very widely associated with the second thing, I think our efforts to fight cringe culture in its current form will be much better spent finding a new word to refer to the first thing and popularizing that than trying to change the meaning of the word “cringe” to be both much stricter and much more serious, both since I believe changing the meaning of a word as prevalent as “cringe” would require more community effort than reclaiming an actual slur, and since people hearing you explain that calling something cringe should mean it’s actually damaging would be all too eager to assume you meant that Naruto running in the halls was actually harmful.
That’s a fair point. It is more wise to destigmatize cringe itself than make us only cringe at actually bad things. Personally, I feel bad about cringing at harmless things that make people happy. The issue is more about viewing cringe as morally bad instead of aesthetically bad. Not all normative assertions are moral, and people often try to justify aesthetic judgments with moral judgments. The, “I can’t dislike something unless it’s morally bad,” mentality.
Cringe exists to reinforce norms. The “funny” part of jokes are so often normative, that I suspect it’s integral to comedy. Comedy seems to always make a statement about how things ought to be, enforcing social norms and spreading views. Cringe is the most ugly version of it because it’s most clearly about social norms and attitudes. We find things “cringe” because of social norms.
When I saw trans people and crossdressers in media, they were portrayed as something cringe worthy, disgusting, and sometimes dangerous. Those people were villainous and gross in ways I already understood as disgusting. They were dirty morally and physically, while “normal” people were clean and benevolent. Same with other marginalized groups. You cringe at disgusting things, and we were conditioned to cringe at minorities. This wasn’t done consciously most of the time as they were just repeating what was learned.
I avoid cringe comedy, and only use cringe humor for actually immoral behavior. Anime itself isn’t cringe, only the creepy and harmful parts of it. Furries aren’t cringe, only the ones that abuse animals. Unless the thing is inherently bad for its own sake, I think it shouldn’t be cringe. Different or unfamiliar things shouldn’t be cringe unless they’re actually bad, and bad things that are familiar should be cringed at more.
I very much agree, but I believe an important part of drawing this distinction is not using the word “cringe”, since, as I said, that makes it easy for people who don’t care to draw that distinction to hear you say “men who are upset that they can’t find a real life woman who actually looks like an anime girl are cringe”, completely miss the point, and respond with “yeah, i know. anime is so cringe. can you believe there are people who naruto run in the halls at my school? their growth has been stunted.” One of these things is genuinely damaging to both that incel and every woman he will ever interact with, and the other is behavior deviant from the norm that people are put off by, which at absolute worst will result in the anime enjoyer running into something or someone because they weren’t looking where they were going.
Since the word “cringe” is already very widely associated with the second thing, I think our efforts to fight cringe culture in its current form will be much better spent finding a new word to refer to the first thing and popularizing that than trying to change the meaning of the word “cringe” to be both much stricter and much more serious, both since I believe changing the meaning of a word as prevalent as “cringe” would require more community effort than reclaiming an actual slur, and since people hearing you explain that calling something cringe should mean it’s actually damaging would be all too eager to assume you meant that Naruto running in the halls was actually harmful.
That’s a fair point. It is more wise to destigmatize cringe itself than make us only cringe at actually bad things. Personally, I feel bad about cringing at harmless things that make people happy. The issue is more about viewing cringe as morally bad instead of aesthetically bad. Not all normative assertions are moral, and people often try to justify aesthetic judgments with moral judgments. The, “I can’t dislike something unless it’s morally bad,” mentality.