Rambling without destination! --- Hans-Georg Moeller is a professor at the Philosophy and Religious Studies Department at the University of Macau, and, with Paul D'Ambrosio, author of "You and Your Profile: Identity After Authenticity". (If you buy this book, or any other by Hans-Georg Moeller, from the Columbia University Press website, please use the promo code CUP20 and you should get a 20% discount.)
I cannot count how many times i have read or heard something deeply human, insightful, original, moving, produced by a stranger on the internet. Even more difficult to count tge amount of empty calories I've consumed in the form of algorithmic sludge. I wonder if these small glimpses of light matter in the end...
Cringe is a weapon wielded by the self-flagellating ones against the ones oblivious to reflection. You know like sociopaths and psychopaths. But the problem is you can't make someone who does not self reflect, self reflect. All it does is make people who can ponder and reflect feel morally superior. Some sort of cringe is necessary. Without cringe, you would be living in Japan where everything has to be seamless and lifeless. Children are supposed to feel shame for parents because they are out of touch and old. But would parents stop being a parent because it is cringe. Grow a pair of lobes. Last of all, philosophy is cringe. Socrates is cringe for thinking he can access the capital letter Truth. Get real, good sir. PS: Your channel has produced so many good videos. Keep it up!
The last sentence of the video was cringey :D, because it felt: "manufactured authenticity" (a term I borrow from Lindsay Ellis and that now I see everywhere). Also: is the king wearing new clothes cringey?
If what is cringeworthy for you is not necessarily cringey for others, then nothing is really cringeworthy. You cringe at calls for social justice because you are a reactionary. The call for social justice feels embarrassing to you because among the reactionaries you hang out with, you would be criticized for it. Ultimately there is only right, which is authentic, and wrong, which isn't, and calling someone "cringe" is just an attempt at shaming them into silence when you have nothing better to say. The inauthentic hate it when the authentic remind them of their inauthenticity. This is actually seen the most clearly in matters unrelated to politics: try to tell someone to stop filming with their phone at a concert for example. It's clear that what they're doing is taking them out of the moment of authentic appreciation of the music and yet they will keep doing it because otherwise they would have to start reflecting on their behavior and it may lead them to realize they were doing something wrong. What you describe as "profilicity" does not differ from "sincerity". In both cases the individual does what is expected of them by others for the sake of social credibility. Both are tools for restricting individuality.
It would also probably be considered Cringe worthy that i bothered to type out a reply to your request to receive feedback about this topic. I might be considered “desperate” for attention - and perceived desperation is definitely considered Cringe. I suppose because it would be a sign of a low-status Profile to act in desperate ways for attention/validation. 😉
This reminds me of seroius conversations on kitsch I ran across long ago - a certain pride and finding beauty in the predictable and items appealing to nostalgia rather than a creative purpose - a kind of anti-art. Cringe is broad, but essentially a kind of anti-real, a loop.of the authentic and inauthentic, people doing things either conscoously or unconsciously that dont fit the observers world and to be called out as such, worst case being well-worn boomer notions presented as overwhelmingly important to a generation that doesnt care, or a person who does something intrinsically stupid or predictable while presenting it as original and interesting. As often as not, someone trying to sell themselves and their ideas too hard.
Being cringe-aware perfectly fits into modern capitalism. You bet/invest on certain highly volatile "identity features" to rise and fall in public perception as you bet on the rise and fall of companies on the stock market.
This is a good description of morality as a behavioural phenomenon. But imo it doesn't go anywhere in answering the question of what is moral or immoral about an act. In todays media driven world, you could often trace the development of the received moral opinion about any act. You would find it comes down to specific judgements made by specific people or teams, usually, but not always, those with high influence. But any received moral judgement is open to critique and the question remains, what are the tools for that critique. Some of the considerations that go into modern morality judgements are equality, fairness, reciprocity, honesty, consistency, consequences and intention. An act is not moral or immoral in itself, but rather is judged further to the deployment of the tools of moral judgement. The fact that many individuals and organisations sail down the prevailing moral wind is a separate issue.
I recently reread William S Burroughs' Cities of the Red Night Trilogy and in a lot of ways it feels like a coming to terms with his earlier ideas of "open media subversion" (as in The Electronic Revolution) in a now more critical lens ala Baudrillard. With Burroughs it was less about "mass media" and more about all communication. In The Electronic Revolution he talks about the ideas of using cut-ups, and disinformation (basically modern meme warfare) to dismantle control and power structures, however by the time of this trilogy about a decade later he's realized those same structures can use those techniques. The first book ends with the implication that his novel is an attempt to dismantle control/language by using the tools of control/language and that at best he can hope for tearing a hole in the universe that someone else can step through.
I am not quite convinced by the idea that there is any other corelation between "cringe" (in russian it's called "Spanish shame") and profilicity. The only seeming connection is just the amount of people online. seeing each other compared to the past. Also, the google word count graphs are misleading due to quality and quantity of sources with time.
in East others shame you collectively in West people shame themselves in their own consciousness but it changed in West with rebound of Marxism and egalitarian madness now kids shame each others for not wearing expensive branded cloths it should be shamed and ostracized to high degree we need to teach new generations it's their internal quality that matters Christianity is a good tool for it it always was hard at ostracising obviously sinful things it inly had problem to properly choose the sins and not get hipocritical at it
evolution of language may bring us: crigify, cringery, cringidity, cringeworthy, cringeless, -ness, cringefull, cringesolence, cringic, cringeistance and the absolution of cringe; but I wouldn't bet on the last one. I thank you for your postings here. Oftentimes it gets me going, while me - keeping a low profile. smile
Don't we also face the possibility that we might fall to provocation? The possibility that one might garner lust to expose themselves, but we fail - wanting courage. Consequently entering a cringe-loop set up by admiration getting into this swamp, mired by cringe on you, ourselves, overall, me! Self-cringe. -is a translation from my german mother tongue as in: Und ist da nicht auch die Möglichkeit, dass man provoziert wird, die Möglichkeit, dass man selbst Lust hat sich zu exponieren, sich dann doch nicht traut, und so in eine Cringe-Schleife gerät, in dieser Bewunderung in einen Sumpf gerät: cringe vor dir, mir, über, ich: Cringeich
To think I wanted to do my thesis on "Personal Branding" in the age of the social media, and wasn't allowed to do so because the professors didn't see the relevancy...
First video I have seen of you where you sort of miss the point. The video is cringy precisely because it is a display of inauthentic virtue, where the actors accept the responsibility for something they had nothing to do with in order to appear more moral than even the victims of the racism. It is ascribing to themselves, in accepting responsibility for something they haven't done in order to facilitate a pathway to liberating the oppressed through the exercise of their elite status and self-promotion - something of a virtuous voluntary victimhood, like Jesus. What makes it cringy is the obvious performative fakeness - as opposed to believable performative fakeness which characterizes most filmed performances including those of influencers. It's cringy because at no point is it believable and what's. Therefore, cringy is watching something that is shameless in itself. In other words, it's cringy because the person doing it doesn't have a sense of shame.
I think that "cringe" is best described as a sort of social or cultural "gag reflex". It is a visceral sensation, not simply an idea. The etiquette that is breached is more than social norms or fashion.....it has to do with witnessing a mind utterly loosing the plot. While you are correct that the plot itself is shifting, cringe is a somatic indicator that one is dexterous enough to keep up. Perhaps the quick switch culture seems like evidence of neurosis, and "cringe" might be reduced to a term like "fashion". I tend to think that is more essential than that.....not the particular things that are or are not cringe worthy, but the quick switch collective mind experience. On some level, keeping up with these invisible and ineffable fashions is a way to signal a dexterous mind.
The fact that the word ‘cringe’ has taken on a colloquial status shouldn’t be taken to mean that it’s at all ‘new’. The idea of being embarrassed *for* someone else, which is essentially what ‘cringe’ has always meant, is not at all new (comedy in the early 00s, such as Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Office, and Peep Show were all examples of cringe-based comedy).
I think it's simpler. In cultures we ascribe often to ideals of pride and grace to varying mixes. Where grace is more ideal, guilt reigns as what there is when gratitude is not acted from. Where pride, the sensation of achievement, is held more ideal, shame reigns as what there is when achievement is not earned. In Christian theology, the grace & blessing of God that is not earned is central. In theology where doing things a right way, as you'd see in confucian-influenced culture, is placed central
Cringe occurs when an obvious attempt at image (profile) curation fails. It takes place in the gap between the perception the actor is hoping to inspire in the observer, and the actual reaction of the observers. Rife with the possibility of invoking cringe-response are attempts to embrace a moral position without convincing the viewer of your sincerity; also attempts to appear "cool" that betray their derivative nature (imitating a celebrity for example). Any communication that is weighted more heavily towards the image of the protagonist, as opposed to real information exchange that would benefit the viewer/hearer, opens itself to a cringe-response. Simple incongruity can stimulate cringe if the attempt falls below a certain irony value. An attempt to appear worldly-wise or enlightened can collapse into cringe response if you fail to integrate it sufficiently (smoothly) into your profile. Humor that is insufficiently "post-authenticity" will also generate cringe-reflex. Old-world sincerity, latitudinarianism, or implicit moral elevations are also quite vulnerable. Hypocrisy is an age-old pitfall that can easily become cringe (see the "Imagine" lyrics read by wealthy celebrities for a great example). TL; DR: Cringe-response is a reflex provoked by profile curation failure, dependent to some extent on the audience receiving the message; the risk of provoking a cringe-response is higher when performed in front of younger people. Cringe is a product of the hive-mind, a social control measure, and a gatekeeping tool to limit entry into an at least semi-defined sub-culture.
western liberals would say, that the public opinion research was either faked in china or that people are afraid to say what they really think about the social credit score in order not to get punished by the regime.
