We’re All a Little Cringe and That’s Okay

There’s an epidemic spreading within Gen Z, and it isn’t a physical ailment. It’s the fear of being perceived as nerdy and cringe, and it’s camouflaged by parody and impersonation. 

Recently, it’s evident in countless trends. People shamelessly imitate cosplayers, Reddit moderators, theatre and band kids. Even video game and movie series “Five Nights at Freddy’s” has been coined as “popular girl humor,” meaning this once indie game has supposedly been reduced to an overused, shallow punchline. 

Instead of internet humor being made up of jokes with witty punchlines, much of it — and thereby much of Gen Z’s overall sense of humor — is making obscure references to these strange types of satire videos, creating the impression of one inside joke with everyone in all corners of the internet. 

This is cringe culture at its finest, and it’s a thinly veiled form of bullying. 

Cringe culture is the internet’s repackaged and supposedly decorous way of mocking social misfits. These people often include, but aren’t limited to, cosplayers and people in fandoms, members of alternative subcultures and neurodivergent people. 

This culture of bullying is injurious to the people it targets, and it disproportionally affects neurodivergent communities. Neurodivergent people, autistic people in particular, often have trouble adhering to popular social norms. They may then subsequently take refuge in fan spaces, causing them to have a high concentration of neurodivergent people whose words and actions are received negatively by ableist outsiders. 

Whether it’s intentional or not, cringe culture is inherently ableist and destructive to neurodivergent people. The vast majority of cringe culture is mocking and imitating autistic and neurodivergent behaviors that people have been made to feel comfortable caricaturing online. This sends the message for neurodivergent people to hide their interests and to mask their fundamental behaviors even further than our ableist society already pushes them to. 

In addition, cringe culture unduly targets the Black community. A large chunk of Gen Z “slang” is actually just appropriated AAVE, or African American Vernacular English, and these words often come from queer Black trans women. Phrases like “clock it,” “purr” and “crashing out” are used both sarcastically and genuinely by non-Black people with no knowledge of where these phrases come from or how it’s harmful to continue using them without being educated. 

By gentrifying AAVE through cringe culture, it perpetuates the racist belief AAVE isn’t a valid form of language and once again puts marginalized groups as the targets of bullying and ridicule. 

It could be, as a generation, Gen Z has lost the art of truly being a nerd. 

American society claims to extol individuality yet, while shamelessly ridiculing and ostracising those who have a distinct and unique sense of self, it simultaneously appropriates their culture and puts them on a pedestal of shame. Then, these same people only involve themselves in mainstream media. They consume media considered safe; media far removed from the risk of being deemed as cringe.

The beauty of fandom and nerd culture is how it’s entirely the opposite of uniformity. It’s full of people with differing opinions, all coming together to discuss and create content about something they love. It’s the difference between liking something because of widespread perception and liking something despite it.

This fear of engaging in fan spaces can also be attributed to the rise of nonchalance, both online and in person. People are afraid of showing they care or are excited about things, essentially turning basic human emotion into an embarrassment and using nonchalance to mask it. 

To be truly cringe is to be free from the restraints of nonchalance and to let personality shine through.

Last summer, there was a TikTok trend where participants would post a photo of themselves surrounded by all their favorite fandoms: books, movies, celebrities, video games, TV shows, YouTubers and more, captioning it with the phrase, “You need to nerd out.” 

Before the trend reached a more mainstream audience who watered it down, it was a rare appreciation of those who often don’t have an opportunity to speak up to a broader audience about their interests and hobbies. People were proud of the things they usually get mocked for and embraced their inner weird kid. 

While this trend died out quickly, in its short time, it demonstrated something important. It showed how people can be proud of their nerdiness, how people can be genuine and uplift each other instead of forcing each other to conform and suppressing themselves along the way. 

Cringe culture keeps itself alive by killing its opposition. It encourages people to appropriate and make fun of the behaviors of marginalized groups for the sake of satire. It’s socially acceptable bullying, causing most people to be too embarrassed to divert from conventionality.

But time and time again, this has been proven to be false. The love people have for the things they enjoy, and the people they interact with through these interests, can be so much greater than the criticism they’re met with. 

Nerds are the heart and soul of online spaces. When people embrace their inner geek, cosplayer or dork, they can finally be free. 

Unless people are able to “nerd out” without being subjugated to relentless torment for it, cringe culture and conformity will lead to the death of individuality.