#207: The Cringe Matrix

A safety guide

Last week I shared an excerpt from my journal that I wrote in the summer of 2022. The entry is titled “AFFIRMATIONS,” and was crafted in the panicky weeks following my and Avi’s decision to try for a kid. It was never meant to be read by the public and you can tell—tonally it’s on par with a corny pep talk you might give yourself in the mirror before public speaking. I laughed when multiple commenters confirmed this by describing it as neurotic and tender, but when one person wrote that the list brought her to tears (love her) and that “life is waiting on the other side of cringe,” I was reminded of something I’ve been wanting to write about for a while: the cringe matrix.

Despite being treated in the popular imagination as something specific—earnestness, maybe—I think cringe is more layered and complex than that. This is why universal sentiments around it (it’s good, it’s bad) always make me a little nervous. “Embrace the cringe,” which I see around a lot, feels like a particularly dangerous game, despite being well-meaning and potentially useful. So today I’ll be presenting a taxonomy of cringe, from wholesome cringe to malevolent cringe, based on my theory that all cringe exists along two axes—from delusional to aware, and insincere to sincere—but hugely varies depending on where it falls. Not everything that exists on these axes is cringe, but all cringe exists on these axes. If you agree, this matrix can serve as a safety guide.

First we need a definition of cringe, which I’m going to borrow from Kevin Munger’s great 2019 piece on The Outline (RIP): “An activity becomes cringe when it violates a social norm, often one against being weird or awkward, to the degree that those watching it derive a sense of social superiority.” I think this applies not just to norm violations but a rejection of (or failure to meet) normative aspirations. For example, trying and failing to appear hip often results in cringe because you’ve violated the norm of being “in the know.” Meanwhile, acting dorky, however “in the know” you may be, violates the shared aspiration of playing it cool, and so may be considered cringe too. This latter example is where “embrace the cringe” feels most relevant—who cares about playing it cool? And yet there are many cases where, actually, playing it cool might be a good idea, such as when you have the urge to unironically recreate a 73 Questions interview in your own home.

Here are the four schools of cringe as I see them:

When someone betrays a norm in a way that is both sincere and aware—by aware I mean either self-aware or more generally aware of their cultural context—that’s wholesome cringe (think being genuine on main). When someone violates a norm with sincerity but lacks awareness of what they’re doing and how it may be received, that’s clueless cringe (think JLo’s This Is Me…Now). If I had to pick one “true” cringe, it’d be this one. The bottom of the graph takes on a more sinister edge: Cringe that is neither sincere nor aware of itself is a train wreck (in that you can’t look away—think Real Housewives Salt Lake City) and cringe that is aware of itself but remains insincere is the worst of all—that’s malevolent cringe (think Kardashian industrial complex). Here we see the norm each school tends to be violating:

It’s worth noting that not all norm violations are cringe—the porn identification rule applies: you know cringe when you see it. There is however an exception, which is your own cringe. This is where the pernicious X-axis, from delusional to aware, comes into play. Time plays an important role here: awareness is ever-renewing and your failure to keep up will inevitably move you leftward. This is why following a trend for too long usually results in clueless or train wreck cringe; it betrays a lack of awareness. Anyone still calling themselves a “software ninja” or listing their Hogwarts house in their social media bio (thank you to Rebecca Jennings for these chilling examples) is not engaging in wholesome cringe—the only one worth embracing, IMO. Ignorance tends to lack charm, but sincerity, at the very least, will save you from the more sinister kinds. Start being inauthentic and things go south fast.

While I was thinking through the cringe matrix, I thought a lot about celebrities. Given one of their main purposes as public figures is to both establish and violate social norms, thus providing us with both guidance and gossip, they’re always operating with a high cringe risk. Add in the insincerity of marketing oneself and the alienation of existing apart from everyone else and they’re supercharged cringe candidates. Some thought starters:

I thought specifically about Taylor Swift since she’s so often accused of being cringe, and as I pondered which school she belonged to, I realized she is actually every type depending on which aspect of her career you’re considering. She’s cringe-flexible, and I’d argue this is part of why she’s so divisive. (I say this as a fan.) You could easily place different songs of hers around the matrix too, or different outfits. The Louis Vuitton look she wore the other day was absolutely malevolent cringe. And yet the Folklore-era newsboy cap? A much more harmless clueless cringe.

Social media cringe is another sphere ripe for being categorized, and is maybe the ultimate sphere, given it shares qualities with the celebrity world (performance, alienation) but captures nearly everybody. When my editor Mallory and I were thinking of cringe examples we returned again and again to online behavior—certain types of captions, reply guys, posturing, or pretending not to posture. The layers of insincerity are infinite on the feed. This is why wholesome cringe is difficult but not impossible to achieve on the internet. We are always at risk of becoming insincere, and usually, everyone can smell it on us.

As for my journal entry of affirmations, I’d like to think it was wholesome, but given that I got my start on the confessional women’s internet, I’d forgive you for thinking it clueless. I do believe I shared it sincerely—my desire to help other women who feel crazy in the same ways I do feels very pure—but I don’t think that broadcasting of earnestness is always the same as earnestness itself. This is where “embracing the cringe” gets tricky. Sometimes our honest impulses have inauthentic aims, and removing our self-critical filters may lead us deeper into the cringe abyss. I’m not arguing for neuroticism though. I just think that, rather than indiscriminately embracing our cringey tendencies, we can instead aim to better understand our motivations, and when we know they’re pure of heart, let ‘em fly.

I became addicted to making these graphs while working on this newsletter and was dying to include more. The possibilities are truly endless. In the group chat Michelle proposed a Real Housewives matrix, Tavi did the cast of Vanderpump, and Cristin categorized specific 73 Questions Vogue interviews. If you also suffer from this disease, feel free to make your own:

Moving on, thank you so much for all the amazing insight you gave last week to the reader who wrote in about being single in her 30s (and feeling jaded by the apps). Reading through your comments made me feel so lucky to have such smart/kind/thoughtful readers (best subscribers on the internet I’m alway saying). I loved doing an open-source round of Dear Baby. Will definitely do again.

My favorite thing I read last week was “It’s Not Emotional Labor,” by Tiffany Watt Smith, which I’ll be thinking about for a while. Friday’s 15 things also included a smutty essay, an underrated Ben Affleck movie, the perfect baked good, and more. The Rec of the Week was the best nonfiction book you’ve ever read, which inspired some serious zealotry omg. I’m making a list!!

I hope you have a nice Sunday,
Haley