The Problem of Cringe and Its Underlying Ableism
An Autistic Perspective on Society’s Cynicism
My friend was popular in school and knew many cool people.
We were in the living room, trying to celebrate her birthday.
I remember how those cool kids gracefully leaned against the wall, almost beaming with all the wisdom I thought they had. After all, I was only thirteen and they were three years older — a lot. Or at least it seemed at the time like it was a lot.
They were not dancing, barely moving. They did nothing but stand straight, chins proudly lifted, eyes darting across the room, soaking in every little detail of the other guests. Judging.
I tried my best to ignore them and enjoy the party.
But that’s exactly when it happened. When a stupid, old Italian party song started playing. I could not resist. I started dancing it while trying to imitate the goofy movements of a hippo, my friend’s favorite animal.
I made sure to act extra silly for her to see me.
It was a little funny scene and it was meant that way.
I wanted to make her laugh. I was told I was good with comedy, although I now believe it was because of my autism.
But my friend did not laugh. She looked at me in disbelief, almost shocked, while simultaneously she gave some nervous looks all around the room. The other guests, including the cool kids, started laughing.
But they were not laughing at the joke. They were laughing at me.
It looked like a scene from a stereotypical American movie. But it was all real and even more terrible.
And that’s when my friend uttered the casual words that destroyed all my teenage confidence:
“You are embarrassing me. Stop being so cringe!”
The shame I felt that day did not stop after that party. But it continued long after. And it all happened due to a culture that even nowadays seems incredibly repulsed by the idea of cringe for no valid reason.
Cringe still needs some deep evaluation. It is an overlooked term. It is seen as a safe, harmless word. But it isn’t. I talk from experience.
In our modern society, it is an expression that makes you feel horrible.
I like cringe stuff. Or rather, what I am interested in is cringe-worthy nowadays by many, many people.
Look, I did not choose to be cringe. I just happened to be autistic and have many interests that other people could not comprehend.
And that is why I want to examine how cringe has evolved throughout the years. I want to explore what is this fascination with labeling other people cringe, and why it is especially harmful to disabled people.
What is cringe
Cringe is an emotional state of deep embarrassment.
It is the feeling that may arise when you are directly the one feeling the emotion or the one projecting it to other people.
To me, cringe is much more complicated than that. It is a feeling that is not simply of embarrassment, but of awkwardness.
This same thesis is shared by Melissa Dahl, author of Cringeworthy: A Theory of Awkwardness (2018). In an interview done by Chen, Dahl defines the emotion of embarrassment as:
“self-consciousness with this undercurrent of uncertainty. You’re really aware of how you’re coming off to the world and then there’s an ambiguity about what to do next.”
She then connects awkwardness to embarrassment, while also differentiating them:
“Embarrassment is a huge part of it, too. But embarrassment is like when you get pantsed in high school. I don’t think we’d call that awkward.”
Some scientists have theorized that embarrassment and awkwardness are consequences of human evolution, resulting in neurological responses.
Specifically, they are instinctual responses to a possible danger.
Indeed, when we cringe, we do that in response to something that disrupts our peace. Something that is even threatening.
For instance, in this regard, Keltner and B. N. Buswell have discovered that the embarrassment that people feel can also be seen in animals who want to display signs of submission to more dominant animals.
Take my dog into consideration. When she meets a bigger, more intimidating dog, she tends to avert her gaze, puts her head down, and even starts to shrink down in a desperate attempt to look physically smaller.
Her feeling is not a state of embarrassment per se, but more of a self-conscious awareness.
And that is how it must have all started back when the Homo Sapiens walked across the earth.
There must have been a time when our ancestors became aware of their selves and others. And with awareness came also the desire to judge.
Why do we cringe
But what exactly triggers this ancient instinct?
Well, over the last few years, several researchers have tried to come up with an answer to this dilemma and nowadays two different theorems have emerged.
The first is the social evaluation model, presented by Rowland S. Miller at Sam Houston State University.
According to this account, embarrassment is nothing but an anticipation of a negative judgment by others. We cringe because we fear the idea others have of us might change.
Let’s use the following scenario: you are introducing your partner to your group of friends only for them to start telling your most private and embarrassing stories. In this case, the anticipation of a negative judgment is on you, as you fear your partner might have a different idea of you.
Another similar scenario but with a different nature is when your friends start singing at your birthday. The friends’ intentions are pure and have nothing negative to it. Indeed, they just want to surprise you.
Yet, you might cringe anyway.
Why?
John Sabini of the University of Pennsylvania tried to divulge a more complete and nuanced explanation.
He came up with the theory of awkward interaction, which defines that embarrassment starts to form when a person does not simply anticipate a negative scenario, but fears the destruction of the entire social synergy.
According to Sabini, people cringe because they experience a stressful social situation not knowing how to react next.
In other words, it is not that the person is worried about looking negatively, but rather that they have no idea how to behave after such a strange interaction.
For instance, we might feel embarrassed when we have to remind people that they owe us something. We don’t like reminding them not because we are worried about how we will look but rather how they will look.
The anticipation of the negative evaluation is on them and not on us anymore.
Why Cringe is Ableist
The reason I believe cringe culture is harmful is because, at its hidden core, it shares many parallels with the ableist rhetoric.
I am a chronically online person and I’ve always seen how autistic and disabled people have been treated on various platforms.
We live in a culture where people tend to call out everything they don’t like or especially don’t understand simply because they are too used to living in their safe bubble.
And the most infuriating aspect is that everything seems legit as long as it happens online. People struggle to call out bullying online simply because it does not take place in real life, but it is more like an internet trend, a sort of joke, and must be accepted the way it is.
When people feel second-hand embarrassment for someone else, I believe we could say it happens because they’re presenting themselves one way and don’t know they’re looking completely different in another way.
The psychologist Philippe Rochat called it “the irreconcilable gap” between who you think you are and who the world sees.
This concept led me to think about the mask theory in the autistic community.
According to Hens, masking is a tactic used by some autistic people, consciously or unconsciously, to seem non-autistic and therefore be more accepted by society.
Many autistic people, myself included, have tried multiple times to blend in, to disguise our true identity, because we feared we could result in being cringe.
I lost count of how many times I’ve been called cringe.
Maybe it was because I was too loud, too excited, too absorbed in my interests, always too much.
But here is the issue and the true core of my article: a large amount of what people like to call “cringe” is honestly just neurodivergent or disabled traits that people feel comfortable making fun of.
But it is our identity and we cannot control it nor do we want to deny it.
The issue is on people judging, not us. They are the ones who are cringe.
When they feel secondhand embarrassment they feel like they don’t know how to behave next. But instead of asking or rolling with a state of awkwardness that is rather subjective anyway, people prefer to assume.
However, disabled people are tired of not being assumed capable.
There is even this beautiful campaign in the UK called End the Awkward, which is all about how non-disabled people don’t know how to interact with disabled people and prefer judging instead of listening.
And that is the entire problem.
If cringe arises when people think you are one way and ignore how you truly are, then these terrible moments of embarrassment where other people want to run away can become beautiful opportunities to start learning.
If awkwardness is a primordial feeling, so is empathy.
What’s the Solution?
Breaking free from the typical social norms can be scary, but also immensely liberating.
I believe it is fundamental for our society to choose kindness. Yes, I’m aware this may sound like a cheap advise, but I truly believe in the power of inclusion and understanding.
It is okay if we don’t fully understand everyone or everything at first sight.
We are human, and therefore fallible.
Yet, a solution cannot be found in just pointing the finger or feeling embarrassed for the other person.
Being in someone’s shoes is the key to being more open-minded and having a different, more nuanced perspective.
Feeling cringe or being called one does not have to be a terrible experience. Not anymore.
Maybe we should reframe the concept of awkwardness as an experience that everyone can face at any point. Instead of letting it define us, we should just use it as a formative lesson. This way the whole experience would be less isolating and would actually become a new way of connecting with other people with similar backgrounds.
Embracing the collective awkwardness as part of our humanity is the next step in creating a society that has empathy for one another. A person should not feel excluded or an outcast, but rather feel part of something much bigger.
Plus, it is okay to be weird or awkward sometimes, too.
We are human and therefore a bit strange. We contain multitudes. Some parts of our beings are quirky and beautiful because they make us who we are. We should not change them, but rather change how they are seen.
Being strange equals being free from capitalist homologation as well.
It is a revolutionary act.
Being cringe is being free. Free from prejudice, free from expectations, free from rigid sets of conduct.
And I would choose it every single day.
References
Chen, Angela. “Why We Cringe, and Why It Can Be a Good Thing.” The Verge, 13 Feb. 2018, https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/13/16964848/melissa-dahl-cringeworthy-awkwardness-psychology-social-science-interview
End the Awkward | Disability charity Scope UK. www.scope.org.uk/campaigns/end-the-awkward.
Hens, Kristien. Towards an Ethics of Autism: A Philosophical Exploration. Open Book Publishers, 2021, https://hdl.loc.gov/loc.gdc/gdcebookspublic.2020447492.
Keltner, Dacher and Brenda N. Buswell. “Embarrassment: its distinct form and appeasement functions.” Psychological Bulletin, vol. 122 n. 3, 1997, pp. 250–70, https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.122.3.250
Rochat, P. (2009). Others in mind: Social origins of self-consciousness. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511812484
Sabini, John, et al. “Who Is Embarrassed by What?” Cognition & Emotion, vol. 14, no. 2, 2000, pp. 213–240, https://doi.org/10.1080/026999300378941.
