Art Blog #171: What Does Cringe Mean?

The Evolution of Cringe: From Secondhand Embarrassment to Internet Gold

Cringe. A word that once simply meant to physically recoil in discomfort has evolved into a cultural currency so valuable that entire TV shows, memes, and even personalities thrive on it. For Millennials and Gen Z, cringe is no longer just an unfortunate social faux pas—it’s an art form, a way of life, and sometimes, a rite of passage. But how did we get here? Why do we love it so much? And why does it haunt us at 2 AM when we suddenly remember that one time we called our teacher "mom" in third grade?

What Even Is Cringe, Anyway?

The dictionary will tell you that to "cringe" is to "bend one’s head and body in fear or embarrassment." But let’s be real—that’s like saying TikTok is just a "video-sharing app." Cringe is deeper than that. It’s watching someone bomb an open mic night so hard that even the microphone tries to escape. It’s the physical pain of hearing an adult say "lit" in a meeting. It’s the existential horror of reading a Facebook status from 2011 where you unironically used "rawr XD."

Cringe is embarrassment turned up to eleven, often vicarious, and almost always hilarious. But not all cringe is created equal. Some of it is a mere awkward stumble, while other forms of it are the emotional equivalent of stepping on a LEGO barefoot for eternity.

The Golden Age of TV Cringe

Long before the internet turned cringe into its own genre, television was already mastering the craft. Some of the most successful comedy shows of all time didn’t just use cringe—they depended on it.

Take The Office (both UK and US versions). The entire premise of the show is built around the unfiltered, socially unaware, and painfully awkward antics of Michael Scott (or David Brent, for the Brits). Watching these characters navigate social interactions is like watching a car crash in slow motion—but instead of turning away, we lean in, unable to look away from the disaster.

Then there’s Arrested Development, a show packed with characters who are either completely oblivious to their own cringeworthiness (cough Gob Bluth cough) or are trying and failing miserably to avoid embarrassment (looking at you, George Michael Bluth). The humor isn’t just in the punchlines—it’s in the uncomfortable silences, the miscommunications, and the sheer audacity of characters who never learn from their mistakes.

Let’s not forget Curb Your Enthusiasm, which is essentially just Larry David collecting social faux pas like Infinity Stones and then wielding them against the universe. If you’ve ever second-guessed a casual interaction for months, this show is your nightmare fuel.

The beauty of these shows is that they don’t just make us laugh—they make us squirm. They remind us of every awkward moment we’ve ever lived through, except now we can laugh at someone else suffering instead of reliving our own trauma. Progress!

Cringe Culture: The Internet’s Most Powerful Weapon

Fast forward to the 2010s, and Millennials took cringe from sitcoms and injected it directly into their veins. Enter: meme culture, where being cringeworthy is both a source of shame and a badge of honor.

Millennials took their collective traumas, awkward teen phases, and unfortunate fashion choices (we see you, 2007 MySpace kids) and turned them into memes. The internet dug up embarrassing old tweets, recorded public fails, and unearthed the deepest corners of YouTube to celebrate the cringiest content imaginable. It was no longer just about laughing at bad moments; it was about embracing them.

Gen Z took it a step further. While Millennials were busy ironically cringing at their old Facebook posts, Gen Z came in with their own breed of cringe. From TikTok thirst traps gone wrong to influencers unironically flexing their wealth in the most tone-deaf ways possible, Gen Z doesn’t just find cringe—it creates it in real time. And let’s not even start on the NPC livestreamers—an entire genre of content where people intentionally act like bad AI characters from a 2003 video game while getting paid for it.

The Sacred Ritual of Self-Cringe

But perhaps the most fascinating evolution of cringe is the way we’ve learned to weaponize it against ourselves. Millennials and Gen Z both share a special bond over self-cringe—the act of looking back at one’s own past behaviors, fashion choices, or tweets and publicly roasting themselves before anyone else can.

There’s an entire genre of TikToks dedicated to reenacting our own past embarrassing moments with captions like "POV: You’re me in 2013 thinking I was the main character." We’ve even turned our collective past shame into trendy aesthetics (hello, Tumblr Core). The once-feared "cringe" is now a source of power.

The Final Boss of Cringe: The Internet’s Ability to Never Forget

Of course, the dark side of cringe is that the internet has a permanent memory. What once would’ve been an embarrassing story you told a friend at a party can now live on forever in the form of a viral video. And let’s be real—there’s nothing quite like waking up to find that a video of you drunkenly mispronouncing "quinoa" has 2 million views.

But maybe that’s what makes cringe so beautiful. It reminds us that we’re all just fumbling through life, making fools of ourselves along the way. And in an era where everything is curated, filtered, and aestheticized to perfection, cringe is the last honest thing we have left.

So go forth and embrace the cringe. Post that bad selfie. Share that awkward story. Rewatch The Office for the 47th time and let yourself die a little inside. Because in the end, we are all cringe. But we are free.

-Peter Von Hauerland