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The author is using "cringe" as something of a euphemism here. "Cringe" in this case is anything that a person could say that would cause other people to think

The author is using "cringe" as something of a euphemism here. "Cringe" in this case is anything that a person could say that would cause other people to think badly of them, including highly offensive things, so long as the person saying it doesn't fully understand why. It doesn't have to be universally cringey, like watching someone do really bad karaoke. It might only be cringey within a small subculture. Say you're used to discussing programming languages. You and your fellows have developed a well-understood notion of why static typing is better than dynamic typing. Then along comes some fool who has watched too many Rich Hickey videos who wants to tell you that types are just guard rails and nobody would navigate by bouncing off the guard rails when they could just drive to their destination. This is cringey because you've heard this argument before, the interloper ought to know that you've heard this before and taken it into account, and it's clear that they're just repeating some argument that they've heard somewhere else. One could have a "stupid things dynamic typers say" bingo-card, with the guard rail argument on it. One could regard the dynamic typer as a kind of NPC bot, popping up to spout the scripted phrases of his kind of person. And it's cringey to watch someone do that. This phenomenon is what the OP is trying to describe, except that on Twitter the subject matter is unlikely to be static vs. dynamic types, but something political which covers much larger categories of people. The fact that so many commenters here are baffled by this suggests that the phenomenon, or at least this intuitive understanding of it, is not quite as widespread as the OP (and I!) might assume, though.

0x8BADF00D 7y ago
That’s why pseudo-anonymity and by extension anonymity are more important now than ever. I never speak my mind on any platform with my real name on it. It’s simply too risky. There may come a time when you could be jailed for what you wrote.
- colechristensen 7y ago
  And I say stupid things with my real name attached all the time to do my small part in preventing that future. I'm not afraid to attach my name to what I believe in (and really, quite a lot I probably don't) I also think people are fooling themselves if they think they can really hide their identity behind a screen name. Staying silent and hiding in the shadows enables that kind of future and can be seen as a pretty good cause of those sorts of things happening around the world throughout history.
- wukerplank 7y ago
  > There may come a time when you could be jailed for what you wrote. What kind of stuff are your writing (about)?
  - raidicy 7y ago
    This is the kind of question that would compel the grandparent to feel the way they do. Although, to me, it may be a bit of hyperbole. Or maybe some not completely unjustified paranoia. If we observe an example where we a step back from the severity of judicial repercussions of a post or comment and look at it socially. We could use the "cancel culture" ideology; where you could write something naively and be ambushed by a group that thinks your thoughts are wrong. I am also assuming Grandparent is in a western country. There are other parts of the world where you could have contributed to an online community and later have whatever subject it was about outlawed. Thus exemplifying gp's idea. And on a side note I felt cringey writing my response. Whatever that means.
    - mistermann 7y ago
      > Although, to me, it may be a bit of hyperbole. Or maybe some not completely unjustified paranoia. "There may come a time when you could be jailed for what you wrote" certainly sounds hyperbolic, but then go back 20 years and imagine who then would have predicted the massive, high stakes (career and industry revenue wise) controversy over the manager of an NBA team making a comment about the freedom of Hong Kong. Or, who could have foreseen such an interesting combination of situations such as a comedian turned Democratic senator being forced to resign by colleagues over excessive freshness with ~7 or so women, combined with many of the same people's odd disinterest in a shadowy figure who is allegedly involved in fairly significant trafficking young girls to the rich and famous, who then proceeds to commit suicide under similarly odd circumstances. As they say, not only is the universe stranger than we think, it is stranger than we can think.
  - Nasrudith 7y ago
    Anything can qualify since you don't get to decide that nor know what group of lunatics, demagogs, or extremists could get power. They could decide that not having over 50% of your content dedicated to their cause is treason. This isn't just some high minded hypothetical - people were been killed in China's Cultural Revolution because their objective innocous facts were interpetted as too "western" or some sort of coded subversion. They have a dubious successor in terms of willfully ignorant persecution in Boko Haram. There is the mocked concept of Roko's Basilisk as a new Age Pascal's Wager - than a hypothetical future AI singularity who punishes you for not leading to its existence. This is effectively the same sort of irrational punishment for what was literally unknowable - but worse as there are myraid competing ones.
islon 7y ago
> You and your fellows have developed a well-understood notion of why static typing is better than dynamic typing. Well... That was cringe for me
- tarsinge 7y ago
  The Rich Hickey reference saved it for me.
vintermann 7y ago
I usually think of "cringe" as vicarious embarrassment. You look at someone doing something that you would have felt deeply embarrassed about having done (Maybe you have done it, or something uncomfortably close to it, in the past). I think it's a kind of involuntary empathy in a strictly mechanical sense - feeling as if you were that person when you look at them. Because when you think about it coldly, it's not obvious why you should care that other people are embarrassing themselves. So it's not empathy in the ethical sense. On the contrary, people who talk about "cringe" are often fiercely angry at the people making them feel this way.
- antonvs 7y ago
  > Because when you think about it coldly, it's not obvious why you should care that other people are embarrassing themselves. It has to do with enforcing and confining oneself to acceptable social behavior, and reinforcing those boundaries for oneself. As you say, it's involuntary, or instinctive, like many social behaviors. > On the contrary, people who talk about "cringe" are often fiercely angry at the people making them feel this way. Aside from blaming them for the discomfort, this is also part of the enforcement aspect.
- gnode 7y ago
  I find it interesting to consider that empathetic experience can make us hostile and less altruistic, and that this is a common yet little acknowledged phenomenon. To dehumanise, denigrate or expel someone is a way to reconcile empathy felt for them, and sometimes more obvious, accessible, or apparently righteous than altruism.
- Pigo 7y ago
  It's almost as hard to describe as ASMR.
lidHanteyk 7y ago
I agree that cringe is relative. To me, static-typing proponents usually emit terribly cringy memes. By failing to think categorically, they fail to see that static typing and dynamic typing are two different facets of the same raw computational structures. I used to consider those discussions as bingo cards, examining each trite argument and carefully constructing responses that would dissemble them. My goal was to try to deprogram folks, to help them realize that there is a world beyond Haskell. I gave up after a uniquely unpleasant experience: A prominent Haskeller gave an extended analogy in public chat about statically-typed and dynamically-typed people. In this analogy, statically-typed people were more reliable, predictable, punctual, thrifty, and just generally better people. And of course they favored statically-typed languages. Cringe leeds to sneer. It's obvious that the NPCs don't understand what they're saying; they spout the words, but the meanings aren't really there and so they cannot reason about their own slogans. This is contemptible, and so one tribe learns to sneer at another tribe, taking their slogans and twisting them into insults. I think that sneer leads to sarcasm by default. Nobody can really tell whether somebody is a genuine member of a tribe, or a sneering troll highlighting the cringe of being genuine. Therefore we say two-faced slogans, like "X sucks, use X" and "thanks, I hate it" and "I am so tired of X" to indicate that we dually are members and also sneerers. We are in on our own joke of being serious about things that nobody ought to be serious about.
zimablue 7y ago
Regardless of the validity of the argument this should be down-voted as old-school trolling where you totally derail a thread by politely starting a massive unrelated argument. It's also missing a point that the original post and a lot of the internet seems to miss. Just enumerating an argument isn't enough to dismiss it, eg. "guard rails" "mansplaining", "squirrel". Just because an argument can be labelled doesn't mean it's invalid, the "guard rail" label could be applied to a nuanced argument about the cost of first order logic as a proof system jammed into all of your code (the original Hickey argument), which seems like it's worthy of not being arrogantly dismissed given the popularity of the language. Sometimes "mansplaining" is appropriate (a female might be wrong/ignorant and a male might seek to correct them), and sometimes "squirrel" is someone pointing out genuine hypocrisy (eg. the genuine hypocrisy of attacking Trumps corruption whilst ignoring blatant establishment corruption, not an argument you can totally dismiss). Ironically this is logic itself getting meme-ified and losing it's semantic value so that the original concept (squirrel = (often) tu ququoe fallacy) is being applied incorrectly and stripped of nuance and unrerstanding.
mirimir 7y ago
That's an excellent tl;dr which ought to be clearly comprehensible to HN users. So basically it's cringey to see stereotyped behavior. Because the fools are behaving just like bots. And they're easy to trigger and manipulate. So it becomes a game, in many communities. But then, thoughtful introspection reveals how much of ones own behavior is predictably scripted. That's a major component of Landmark Education's work. To help you see the scripting in your behavior. And to learn how to catch it before it get's expressed. It's not like it's ever going away. Because it's part of being human. But you can develop a level of consciousness above all that machinery. For example, there are paired exercises where people troll each other as hard as they can. Nothing is out of bounds. So you get to see what triggers you, and how you respond to it. But it's a safe space, with trained moderators around, in case people lose it. Back in the day, before we got so fragile, there were exercises where participants faced each other wearing just bathing suits. Maybe 200 people in a large room, in lines about 20 people in each line. And the lines got shuffled, so everyone got to spend maybe 10 minutes silently "being with" everyone else. This was during a retreat. After 2-3 days of ~15 hours per day in sessions, healthy meals, and no coffee, tea, tobacco, alcohol or other drugs. And only 4-6 hours sleep, with morning exercises and running. I guess that you'd call it "boot camp" today.
- doodliego 7y ago
  > For example, there are paired exercises where people troll each other as hard as they can... But it's a safe space, with trained moderators around, in case people lose it. Just curious, but where and why are you undergoing that kind of training? I've never heard of those tactics being used outside of cult-like environments or some kind of abusive therapy. Military boot camp, maybe? It sounds extreme and unethical.
  - mirimir 7y ago
    It was the Six Day, offered by Landmark Education, formerly est. At a beautiful retreat center in the Catskills. There was also a ropes course, which involved repelling down a 50 foot cliff, a transverse across a 20 foot gap, and a long zip line (maybe as much as a mile, but I could be wrong). Prerequisites included a complete physical, and assessment by a professional trainer. As I recall, you had to be able to run a mile in decent time. They videotaped each participant at the beginning, making a five minute presentation about themself. And then, near the end. The final session was devoted to watching clips from each participant's presentations. The changes were profound. It was one of the most transformative experiences of my life. Along with hundreds of LSD trips, of course. And spending a few years as an itinerant hippie LSD dealer. And a few years of Aikido. And earning a PhD. It was probably a lot like basic military training. But without the bits about killing people. The New Warrior training included some of that. And it also included one on one interactions in a ring, which included unrestricted verbal abuse, which could escalate to wrestling. But no hitting, joint locks, throwing, etc. As I said, I doubt that it would be doable today. Given how emotionally fragile many have become. And how out of shape. Not to mention how litigious. But I do emphasize that these were all adults who participated voluntarily, with full disclosure. And you could leave, at any time. As I recall, you got your money back if you left during the first day or two.
Thorentis 7y ago
I agree with your assessment of the article (in terms of what it was trying to express), and I agree that what you have described does occur on the Internet. But I disagree that this phenomenon that you (and the article writer) have described, is known as "cringe". When people talk about "cringeposting" or saying "that was so cringe", they mean the vicarious embarrassment, the feeling you get when you feel so bad for somebody that it's almost funny, when you realise that somebody is being a try-hard, and doesn't know how badly they're failing, etc. What you have described is just commonly known as "stereotyping". People do it all the time in real life, and all the time online. Person x spouts an opinion that people in group y think everybody in group x has. That isn't cringe. Everybody has biases and stereotypes. If I see somebody from x political group saying something I've heard 1000x before, my first thought would probably be "here goes x grouper again". I would't think they are cringeposting or that they are a cringey, just that they are another classic example of some stereotype that I have developed over many years of reading articles, posts and comments by people like that.

0x8BADF00D 7y ago

That’s why pseudo-anonymity and by extension anonymity are more important now than ever. I never speak my mind on any platform with my real name on it. It’s simply too risky. There may come a time when you could be jailed for what you wrote.

colechristensen 7y ago
And I say stupid things with my real name attached all the time to do my small part in preventing that future. I'm not afraid to attach my name to what I believe in (and really, quite a lot I probably don't) I also think people are fooling themselves if they think they can really hide their identity behind a screen name. Staying silent and hiding in the shadows enables that kind of future and can be seen as a pretty good cause of those sorts of things happening around the world throughout history.
wukerplank 7y ago
> There may come a time when you could be jailed for what you wrote. What kind of stuff are your writing (about)?
- raidicy 7y ago
  This is the kind of question that would compel the grandparent to feel the way they do. Although, to me, it may be a bit of hyperbole. Or maybe some not completely unjustified paranoia. If we observe an example where we a step back from the severity of judicial repercussions of a post or comment and look at it socially. We could use the "cancel culture" ideology; where you could write something naively and be ambushed by a group that thinks your thoughts are wrong. I am also assuming Grandparent is in a western country. There are other parts of the world where you could have contributed to an online community and later have whatever subject it was about outlawed. Thus exemplifying gp's idea. And on a side note I felt cringey writing my response. Whatever that means.
  - mistermann 7y ago
    > Although, to me, it may be a bit of hyperbole. Or maybe some not completely unjustified paranoia. "There may come a time when you could be jailed for what you wrote" certainly sounds hyperbolic, but then go back 20 years and imagine who then would have predicted the massive, high stakes (career and industry revenue wise) controversy over the manager of an NBA team making a comment about the freedom of Hong Kong. Or, who could have foreseen such an interesting combination of situations such as a comedian turned Democratic senator being forced to resign by colleagues over excessive freshness with ~7 or so women, combined with many of the same people's odd disinterest in a shadowy figure who is allegedly involved in fairly significant trafficking young girls to the rich and famous, who then proceeds to commit suicide under similarly odd circumstances. As they say, not only is the universe stranger than we think, it is stranger than we can think.
- Nasrudith 7y ago
  Anything can qualify since you don't get to decide that nor know what group of lunatics, demagogs, or extremists could get power. They could decide that not having over 50% of your content dedicated to their cause is treason. This isn't just some high minded hypothetical - people were been killed in China's Cultural Revolution because their objective innocous facts were interpetted as too "western" or some sort of coded subversion. They have a dubious successor in terms of willfully ignorant persecution in Boko Haram. There is the mocked concept of Roko's Basilisk as a new Age Pascal's Wager - than a hypothetical future AI singularity who punishes you for not leading to its existence. This is effectively the same sort of irrational punishment for what was literally unknowable - but worse as there are myraid competing ones.

islon 7y ago

> You and your fellows have developed a well-understood notion of why static typing is better than dynamic typing. Well... That was cringe for me

tarsinge 7y ago
The Rich Hickey reference saved it for me.

vintermann 7y ago

I usually think of "cringe" as vicarious embarrassment. You look at someone doing something that you would have felt deeply embarrassed about having done (Maybe you have done it, or something uncomfortably close to it, in the past). I think it's a kind of involuntary empathy in a strictly mechanical sense - feeling as if you were that person when you look at them. Because when you think about it coldly, it's not obvious why you should care that other people are embarrassing themselves. So it's not empathy in the ethical sense. On the contrary, people who talk about "cringe" are often fiercely angry at the people making them feel this way.

antonvs 7y ago
> Because when you think about it coldly, it's not obvious why you should care that other people are embarrassing themselves. It has to do with enforcing and confining oneself to acceptable social behavior, and reinforcing those boundaries for oneself. As you say, it's involuntary, or instinctive, like many social behaviors. > On the contrary, people who talk about "cringe" are often fiercely angry at the people making them feel this way. Aside from blaming them for the discomfort, this is also part of the enforcement aspect.
gnode 7y ago
I find it interesting to consider that empathetic experience can make us hostile and less altruistic, and that this is a common yet little acknowledged phenomenon. To dehumanise, denigrate or expel someone is a way to reconcile empathy felt for them, and sometimes more obvious, accessible, or apparently righteous than altruism.
Pigo 7y ago
It's almost as hard to describe as ASMR.

lidHanteyk 7y ago

I agree that cringe is relative. To me, static-typing proponents usually emit terribly cringy memes. By failing to think categorically, they fail to see that static typing and dynamic typing are two different facets of the same raw computational structures. I used to consider those discussions as bingo cards, examining each trite argument and carefully constructing responses that would dissemble them. My goal was to try to deprogram folks, to help them realize that there is a world beyond Haskell. I gave up after a uniquely unpleasant experience: A prominent Haskeller gave an extended analogy in public chat about statically-typed and dynamically-typed people. In this analogy, statically-typed people were more reliable, predictable, punctual, thrifty, and just generally better people. And of course they favored statically-typed languages. Cringe leeds to sneer. It's obvious that the NPCs don't understand what they're saying; they spout the words, but the meanings aren't really there and so they cannot reason about their own slogans. This is contemptible, and so one tribe learns to sneer at another tribe, taking their slogans and twisting them into insults. I think that sneer leads to sarcasm by default. Nobody can really tell whether somebody is a genuine member of a tribe, or a sneering troll highlighting the cringe of being genuine. Therefore we say two-faced slogans, like "X sucks, use X" and "thanks, I hate it" and "I am so tired of X" to indicate that we dually are members and also sneerers. We are in on our own joke of being serious about things that nobody ought to be serious about.

zimablue 7y ago

Regardless of the validity of the argument this should be down-voted as old-school trolling where you totally derail a thread by politely starting a massive unrelated argument. It's also missing a point that the original post and a lot of the internet seems to miss. Just enumerating an argument isn't enough to dismiss it, eg. "guard rails" "mansplaining", "squirrel". Just because an argument can be labelled doesn't mean it's invalid, the "guard rail" label could be applied to a nuanced argument about the cost of first order logic as a proof system jammed into all of your code (the original Hickey argument), which seems like it's worthy of not being arrogantly dismissed given the popularity of the language. Sometimes "mansplaining" is appropriate (a female might be wrong/ignorant and a male might seek to correct them), and sometimes "squirrel" is someone pointing out genuine hypocrisy (eg. the genuine hypocrisy of attacking Trumps corruption whilst ignoring blatant establishment corruption, not an argument you can totally dismiss). Ironically this is logic itself getting meme-ified and losing it's semantic value so that the original concept (squirrel = (often) tu ququoe fallacy) is being applied incorrectly and stripped of nuance and unrerstanding.

mirimir 7y ago

That's an excellent tl;dr which ought to be clearly comprehensible to HN users. So basically it's cringey to see stereotyped behavior. Because the fools are behaving just like bots. And they're easy to trigger and manipulate. So it becomes a game, in many communities. But then, thoughtful introspection reveals how much of ones own behavior is predictably scripted. That's a major component of Landmark Education's work. To help you see the scripting in your behavior. And to learn how to catch it before it get's expressed. It's not like it's ever going away. Because it's part of being human. But you can develop a level of consciousness above all that machinery. For example, there are paired exercises where people troll each other as hard as they can. Nothing is out of bounds. So you get to see what triggers you, and how you respond to it. But it's a safe space, with trained moderators around, in case people lose it. Back in the day, before we got so fragile, there were exercises where participants faced each other wearing just bathing suits. Maybe 200 people in a large room, in lines about 20 people in each line. And the lines got shuffled, so everyone got to spend maybe 10 minutes silently "being with" everyone else. This was during a retreat. After 2-3 days of ~15 hours per day in sessions, healthy meals, and no coffee, tea, tobacco, alcohol or other drugs. And only 4-6 hours sleep, with morning exercises and running. I guess that you'd call it "boot camp" today.

doodliego 7y ago
> For example, there are paired exercises where people troll each other as hard as they can... But it's a safe space, with trained moderators around, in case people lose it. Just curious, but where and why are you undergoing that kind of training? I've never heard of those tactics being used outside of cult-like environments or some kind of abusive therapy. Military boot camp, maybe? It sounds extreme and unethical.
- mirimir 7y ago
  It was the Six Day, offered by Landmark Education, formerly est. At a beautiful retreat center in the Catskills. There was also a ropes course, which involved repelling down a 50 foot cliff, a transverse across a 20 foot gap, and a long zip line (maybe as much as a mile, but I could be wrong). Prerequisites included a complete physical, and assessment by a professional trainer. As I recall, you had to be able to run a mile in decent time. They videotaped each participant at the beginning, making a five minute presentation about themself. And then, near the end. The final session was devoted to watching clips from each participant's presentations. The changes were profound. It was one of the most transformative experiences of my life. Along with hundreds of LSD trips, of course. And spending a few years as an itinerant hippie LSD dealer. And a few years of Aikido. And earning a PhD. It was probably a lot like basic military training. But without the bits about killing people. The New Warrior training included some of that. And it also included one on one interactions in a ring, which included unrestricted verbal abuse, which could escalate to wrestling. But no hitting, joint locks, throwing, etc. As I said, I doubt that it would be doable today. Given how emotionally fragile many have become. And how out of shape. Not to mention how litigious. But I do emphasize that these were all adults who participated voluntarily, with full disclosure. And you could leave, at any time. As I recall, you got your money back if you left during the first day or two.

Thorentis 7y ago

I agree with your assessment of the article (in terms of what it was trying to express), and I agree that what you have described does occur on the Internet. But I disagree that this phenomenon that you (and the article writer) have described, is known as "cringe". When people talk about "cringeposting" or saying "that was so cringe", they mean the vicarious embarrassment, the feeling you get when you feel so bad for somebody that it's almost funny, when you realise that somebody is being a try-hard, and doesn't know how badly they're failing, etc. What you have described is just commonly known as "stereotyping". People do it all the time in real life, and all the time online. Person x spouts an opinion that people in group y think everybody in group x has. That isn't cringe. Everybody has biases and stereotypes. If I see somebody from x political group saying something I've heard 1000x before, my first thought would probably be "here goes x grouper again". I would't think they are cringeposting or that they are a cringey, just that they are another classic example of some stereotype that I have developed over many years of reading articles, posts and comments by people like that.