What is cringe?

[Phimosis Jonisis]

Any joke that originated from reddit

 

[Johnny Salami]

cringe

 

[smegma enthusiast]

An actual answer. Cringe is usually from when a group, person, or organization attempts to be something they’re not with no self-awareness. See videos of crazy people in public; they think they are intelligent/reasonable, they are not. Terrible singing, think they’re great, they’re not. Troons, think they’re hot sexy lesbian women, they are not.

 

[crows in guns]

Your mom

 

[IKOL]

Cringe is OP's bitchtits. Utter shame.

 

[Wormy]

Anything that gives someone pleasure and makes them have any emotion whatsoever.

 

[Drain Todger]

Cringe is a very specific sensation that comes from witnessing people do things that are socially inept and awkward and utterly tactless. It is vicarious embarrassment. It isn't enough for someone to do something merely immoral or trashy. Those don't always qualify as cringe. Even trashiness can be done with so much style, you can't help but admire the perpetrator.

When you see cringe, and I mean real cringe, the hairs stand up on the back of your neck.

It's like chugging extra-spicy hot sauce, or that weird feeling you get from ASMR videos. It is an intense physiological reaction.

 

[CowPox]

Being caught behaving sincerely.

 

[Teh_Real_Ted_Bundy]

"Cringe" is just another word for empathetic embarrassment. Embarrassment is related to the idea of social threat, and empathy is a peculiar concept wherein emotions and sensations believed to be experienced by other (generally sapient) entities are mirrored in effect within one's own psyche as a tool for understanding and connection.

Cringe becomes funny when its status as cringe has been acknowledged and accepted by the majority of observers, thus turning it "relatable" and in some cases even "wholesome".

Things will continue to be cringe no matter what due to uncertainty of how others will react.
While one can disarm cringe to a great extent by using mechanisms such as humor to acknowledge and frame a given situation as more socially palatable, events outside one's control will continue to involve social threat and therefore will be cringe.

As an example, here is relatively popular forum user @Null engaging in "cringe", however due to the context and his reputation this is accepted by his audience to be normal:

Joshua San.mp3

I hope this post will be of help in the future.

"B-boko no.."

 

[Little oak tree]

Probably just shame and ignorance of what we are and pretending to be something else and being caught

 

[Stan]

It’s like schadenfreude except instead of being happy to watch another persons suffering you feel embarrassed cause you used to do shit like this and you’re grateful it’s not you on the roasting spit.

 

[think]

Projecting your insecurities upon others while forcing them to modify their response to your benefit is pretty cringe.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

This explains

 

[ArnoldPalmer]

You, nigga

 

[Zero Day Defense]

https://youtube.com/watch?v=GVm35BlstjYThis explains

Wait, where did the onions come from?

 

[JosephStalin]

Like a number of other things, cringe is in the eye of the beholder. Something that leaves no impression on one person, another may consider cringe, and possibly yet another might find based.