From Self-Cringe to Self-Insight

Cringing at ourselves, while painful, can lead to greater awareness of our personal identity. First, one of the most common forms of self-cringe is cringing at our past selves, which reminds me of this meme (our brains are incredibly adept at recording cringe memories in crisp detail, whereas positive memories are a bit more blurry).…

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The Anatomy of Cringe

What is the reason for the modern fascination with cringe? The past decade has seen the proliferation of cringe compilation videos (which can generate millions of views), as well as the growth of specific forums where such content is shared, like the various-cringe-related subreddits: r/Cringetopia (1.7 million members, at the time of writing), r/cringepics (1.4…

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