Cringe Philosophy 

It is a privilege to have access to you without having to be enrolled into any of your classes. This is one thing that only RU-vid can deliver, and for that I'm grateful for RU-vid.

the cringy part was definitely the part at the end where you asked what part was cringy and said you needed to know as well

existing is low-key cringe. Liking things is definitely cringe.

It's almost on the verge of cringe how PewDiePie thought it was cringe.

Would love to see a follow-up video on "based philosophy." And maybe a capstone epilegomenon "beyond based and cringe."

In the era of sincerity, "shameless" was considered an insult; under authenticity, "remorseless" is an insult. I wonder if under profilicity, "cringeless" will become an insult. Because I consider myself completely cringeless. 😂

Here in Australia, the term "cultural cringe" was coined in the 50s to describe the sense of inferiority and shame in our cultural and intellectual products, and our inferiority culture compared to Europe. Its funny to think of an entire nation's creatives considering themselves to be collectively cringey

Connecting "cringe" to "profilicity" seems quite insightful. As emotional reactions, shame, guilt, and cringe must all involve some sort of interoceptive response. It would be interesting to untangle varieties of the latter...

I hope the idea of cringing is a chrysalis in our ascension from and abandonment shame, guilt and cringe.

I was amazed by looking at the channel of the Vietnamese woman Uyen Ninh showing with the short «How I changed since I lived in Germany» the concept of identity is looking from her standpoint as an adaptation to fit into a society, making the constructed identity falling apart by living in another country. Identity as such has a function not for the person itself but for the relationship to other humans in society. Thus identity is a political category. The whole concept of Profilicity is dependent on the definition of identity in the American sense as part of a modern citoyen with a blind affirmation of a modern society with its atomized humans. It's no surprise the author is declaring democracy in the act of observing an artist in his book about Profilicity . This part of Philosophy is naturalizing concepts of society and is so becoming totalitarian. A remark about cringe. The meaning of the terms like cringe, Karen and facepalm is floating all the time. From a linguistic point of view a language is changing continuously. The masses of cognates in languages are showing the idea of a static language even over a short time span doesn't exists. And yet philosophy insists on the concept of a static language which is a dismissal of human creativity.

“Cringe”is a defense against narcissistic injury.

this is the only channel that I can't dare to leave cringe comments

ContraPoints has a really good video about cringe

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.

in Spanish-speaking countries we have "vergüenza ajena". Wikipedia's article on 'Vicarious embarrassment' puts it as synonym with 'Fremdschämen' and also with "Spanish shame". Perhaps the popularization of 'cringe' has something to do with the 'latinization' of global culture (just like with reggaeton-trap music)?

Finally a new video! Thanks.

I guess breaking down the meaning of 'cringe' in a scholarly fashion might be considered cringe, but I enjoyed the video.

In Brazilian Portuguese we have used “vergonha alheia”, literally “someone else’s shame” for as long as I can remember and seemingly before I was born in 1990. It’s an old idea.

cant wait to make my friends cringe when i tell them about this. thanks.

This is one of the better uses of the concept of profilicity developed by the appreciated host

Happy to point out that the very final plea was indeed quite cringy - but then again perhaps that was the whole point of it 🤔

Yoo! Good video man. Presentation is on point.

Just as I missed your videos yesterday

nice video! love the carsick cars at the end

Great video as always. I recently had a situation similar to the one pewdiepie and his wife had, where something that was actually rather "cool" for me, was absolutely "cringe" for my friend. And to answer your question: The only thing that was cringeworthy was the question itself - as I don't think that you actually "care" about what or if you were cringe. Much like the actors in the "taking responsibility" video, the lack of authenthicity made this moment cringe. (Or at least that's what I'm thinking)

Great video

Your videos on media theory and identy technology are second to none. Deep yet easy to understand. Cant tell you how excited i get when a new post of yours shows up. Keep them coming please. On a side note i wonder what your thoughts are on people who are oblivious to cringe, to the point that it becomes an asset. Im thinking of people like tommy wiseau or neil breen. There's a weird dynamic there, where their audience simultaneously would hate to be that unaware, but is also envious of the freedom that lack of awareness would grant.

Great video as always! I have recently started a RU-vid channel myself, and its fascinating to experience it from the inside. I imagine many of your insights on prolificity comes from that experience. For instance, I notice that I value praise from random people more than from my friends. This is of course I see them as more objective and doesn't feel obliged to give me praise. Also, the amount of statistics youtube gives for each video, with live updating viewer numbers etc is quite stressful and I notice my mood follows the views-graph which obviously isnt good.

Please make more philosophy in motion videos 😢

People conflate authenticity and being unique. The former is honesty, the latter is entitlement to be different.

I see the "Three Body Problem" book in the background. Have you read "Dark Forest" and "Death's End"? I'd love to hear a spoiler-filled analysis of the series through a philosophical lens...especially from someone who has expertise in Chinese philosophy.

“Vicarious embarrassment”, or “Spanish Shame”. Apparently, “Fremdschämen” in German.

"What makes people cringe, or at least say so!" I'd emphasize "at least say so."

To a Subject using Profilicity as there identity technology, any profile that shows signs of attempted Genuine use of Sincerity or Authenticity is likely to cause Cringe for the one using Profilicity, as it seems the other still thinks there profile is their own and not a second order reflection of the general peer.

thank you 🙏

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.

Great content! Nothing cringeworthy from my perspective. I do believe that by being authentic and rooted in ourselves we can experience other people's emotional reaction to our content as illuminating towards how different we can be as human beings. Your guy/girl video disagreeing about whether the Finnish guy's attempt to do a backflip was cringeworthy was a perfect example of this.

Asking what is cringy is cringy.

This word is very overused, making it hard to define.

Knowing what will be cringe in the future could make you a lot of money

Here’s one for you; Getting “Triggered” seems to now be universally considered Cringe behaviour.

when I was young I was told that only cowards cringe

As a wise man once said: "The cringe is compulsory"

There are like so many words to listen to in this video

1:08 in Russia we call it "Spanish shame". Though I don't really know why

In Finnish cringe would translate as myötähäpeä (mitt schade; shared shame). It may be a construct from Swedish medkänsla (compassion) through changing "känsla" (feeling) to shame. Myötähäpeä is a newish concept, probably born to describe cringe exactly.

hard to believe that I have more to say on top of a 23 minute video. One thing - I think cringe is often a word people use to hide anger. When people are angry at another person's misbehaviors, sometimes they say that they cringe. Some people use "sadness" in the same way. Definitely not always happening with cringe. But I think we have an "anger epidemic" in the USA these days, maybe in the rest of the world, to a lesser extent. And I think that the anger epidemic actually contributes to the cringe epidemic.

(i do not speak english very well) I read an article in which fake sneakers were "cringe", because "they were trying and failing to be" original sneakers. Autor wore them for a month as an experiment and his mental state deteriorated greatly. Maybe you'll be interested in that article, because for me it looks like good example of profilicity, article called "How Wearing Fake Sneakers for 30 Days Drove Me Into Deep Depression"

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...

Nice topic. Shame and shame for others. When I look at what's happening in my home country, it's just embarrassing 😱🙈🙉🙊- should we be ashamed of others or should we just ignore it? Feeling ashamed of others comes from connection. Others, however, say: "what do you care? They also don't care if a sack of rice tips over here." Very well done video, I'm looking forward to the next ones... 😉

Great to see a new video again! Wonder if this was inspired by our discussions on the class in Belgrade 😊

The guilt/shame opposition doesn't only have a Western/Eastern aspect - it also has a Western past vs Western present society aspect: according to some psychotherapists, nowadays depression is mostly of a narcissistic nature (based on the feeling of shame/inadequacy of the Self) while in the past it was more based on the feeling of guilt.

I've seen the clip at 13:35 a few times, not because I wanted to, but because people sometimes use it for reference. Every time I desperately wish it was meant as sarcasm. I guess this explains cringe humour. You are shown some next level cringe, but when it's revealed to be parody, we laugh with the sudden release of tension. Edit: of course Moeller went on to cover that in the video. Does this acknowledgement reduce or increase the cringe of my comment?

The word used to be cringe-worthy. Internet tends to shorten words and meaning become far more loose

This guy reminds me of 60 minutes with Andy Rooney ❤

Cringe is still heavily dependent on the subjective viewpoint of a person's learned-prejudice that he/she grew-up with.

Prof muller, honestly what is really cringe is the fact that YOU DON'T UPLOAD MUCH MORE FREQUENTLY THAN THIS.

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).

Обожаю академическую философию. Первый кадр хочется напечатать и повесить с портретом Канта

all I know is, I’m exhausted with everyone’s seeming obsession with cringe and how quick so many people are to want to call cringe on something. Your video makes a good case for how inescapable it is, so can we all just please move on already? I find it kinda gross how young people are actually training each other on 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

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.

I largely agree with what you have to say about the basic differences between guilt in shame, especially in contrast to this novel phenomenon of cringe. However, I do wonder if the Christian tradition, properly construed, in fact incorporates far more elements of shame than it does the traditional western, Dostoevskian-existential guilt. From the orthodox Catholic perspective, what "sin" is is not simply a matter of adverse effects on social relations wrought by personal actions, which seems to correspond to how guilt is defined here, as primarily a matter of personal (that is, individual) decisions that are found to violate some objective set of standards. However, although sin is not reducible to an action's effects on social relations, it is fundamentally an offense against God, which for the Christian is not some idealized self-projection or Freudian super-ego, but rather a person to whom one is always already subject and to whom one is actively judged. That's why sacramental reconciliation is so powerful and efficacious - not because, as Zizek has suggested, the violator is merely indemnified of the eternal consequences of her actions - but because she is restored to full communion with the very real person against whom one has committed offense. She is also restored to the broader Christian community, which can become quite conspicuous when she is physically observed not partaking in the Eucharist during Sunday Mass and other such external signs. Anyway, a great video and I can appreciate the connection to profilicity. Edit: clarity.

Cringe video about cringe. Not sure if I should have seen that coming or not.

I think "cringe" is similar to "vergüenza ajena" in Spanish, but when applied on social media.

Thanks dad

In Spanish you can say "vergüenza ajena", literally shame from outside.

What I found cringe in this video is the application of a theory from the last century, we are in 2024, professor.

The flowers you had so prominently displayed on your side were cringey AF.

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.

Ironically asking people to point out what is cringe was a little bit cringe.

Analyzing cringe is so cringe.

The german term "Fremdschämen" feels like the academic version of cringe. Was surprised hw didnt mention it when he went to Schadenfreude. Aaaand he did in the end. Now i feel ashamed.

Two comments: 1. What you didn't mention is that cringe at the same time is a community identity-building phenomenon. If a group of people share a profile (as in profilocity), they will cringe at the same thing at the same time. For example - In the social situation in real life, if you have ever been part of a cringe worthy moment, you know how the people who share the same identity will look each other in the eye to confirm they all share this feeling and condemn the person who is the source of cringe. On the a social media plane, for example, it may occur as a meme that is posted on a small Instagram profile that is only viewed by the community that shares that identity (such insta profile usually talks and creates content around their shared profile) . I think the source of this communal aspect is what you said about the ever-changing nature of profiles and identity based on profiles in a profilocity-based society. Cringe is needed to constantly update the boundaries of the profile through opposition. Together we are what we cringe at. 2. This is more of an anecdote, but in one of the social groups of people who are 10-20 years younger than me, let's say 20-20-something, who use cringe and feel cringe a lot, there is a notion of rejecting cringe or even embracing cringe. My observation is that it's because cringe is a form of shaming (an idea in itself, that younger generation rejects) what is cringe for one identity profile is something positive in another identity profile. So, because identity in proficity is an amalgamation of many profiles, too much cringe in a community discourages individuals from expressing themselves through other profiles that are not the profile that binds the community, what are important to the identity of individuals within the community.

It's cool to know the germans have the concept of 'Fremdschämen' because also say the same thing in Portuguese: "Vergonha alheia". Literally, "Shame (feeling ashamed) for others". Also interesting to know this concept only took off in Germany 10 years ago.

Awesome

please talk about representation, because it is really fit into your profilization philosophy. Representation basically ethnic profilization. Where ethnic identity shape not by community but how it is viewed in media.

yeah it is weird sometimes, like being greet by your parents or so close with your parents is cringe for some, like leave me and my family alone.

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

9:35 - you really didn't had to. Your choice Professor.

I’d like to know where you’re drawing your definition of authenticity from.

Beutifull video!!!!!

Danke dir 🤭

Regarding Jordan Peterson, I think it is great that you mention him. Even though he is Canadian, I'd agree that he represents the standard moral philosophy of the USA and actually the entire English-speaking world quite well. And indeed, his opinions is quite similar in the USA, Canada, and anywhere else in the English-speaking world, with just tiny variations. In addition, the difference between most conservatives and liberals in the Anglophone world is not so great when you understand the full-range of moral thought; the differences are usually related to political wedge issues that conservatives hold mainly because they are grudges, the phenomenon of some people flat-out "liking" religious life, people taking oppositional stances to other ethnic/regional groups due to deep grudges from the past, etc. The difference in outcome of the USA vs. other Anglophone countries is not the moral framework. That's why JBP can be so popular to American audiences. Likely the difference has more to do with various events of enormous social turmoil in the USA, since the enormous turmoil in the history of the USA created a society at-war with itself, which is a rather unique situation (maybe only the Russian world has a similar situation), and it creates a feedback loop of distrust and un-cooperation that leads to a lot of major social/legal/cultural differences when compared to countries with less turmoil and more unity in their history.

If anyone feels cringe about anything I do, what do I care? Or should I even care or pretend I do?

Cringe is not new. It's new terminology. Cringe refers to a feeling of discomfort usually caused by seeing someone perform disagreeable politics. It's about the equivalent of seeing someone eat a handful of earthworms.

I am not sure it so societal. I often feel cringe that is produced by my own set of values and ethics while other people seem to be ok.

I think it's the new version of "lame". It has lost a lot of its original meaning to the point where it's almost never used in its pure form.

What is the samurai film at 1:59?

Is second hand observation the same as theory of mind?

Do I read intention on the choice of players that missed penalty kicks?

i do declare that everyone should watch the most worthy cringe video of youtube, of jreg, titled 'Post-Cringe, Faux-Cringe and Cringe Accelerationism'. the last words on cringe have been said in that video, yes.

There's a profound missed opportunity here. Cringe is tangible, visceral, and communicable. It bears the traces of a communal feeling, it may be a proto-religious experience of the "profilicity era".

people have become so shameless that we have to feel shame for them! ergo cringe a cringy thing about this video might be how it tried to over complicate a simple thing like cringe with buzzwords that were unnecessary

Seneca feels the cringe ... From On Tranquility of Mind: 6) In one's own misfortunes, a person should act so as to grant to grief only what nature demands," not what is required by custom. Indeed, most men shed tears for show and have dry eyes whenever they have no onlooker, thinking it shameful not to weep when everyone is doing it. This evil of depending on other men's opinion has implanted itself so deeply that even the simplest matter, grief has turned into pretense.

Do you have a course of any philosophy topics that I can watch?

The ascribed/coined word maybe new, but the feeling is not. And like many of these new words (and mindless trends, attitudes and behaviors) it is…well…cringe. I enjoy your channel and content, Sir.

I didn’t cringe once during the video. The closest I got was when you included a clip of some guy talking about a video of someone pouring nut on their face lol but I didn’t cringe I laughed. Even if you didn’t realize the clip was inappropriate and only accidentally included it (which would be a social clumsiness) it still wouldn’t be cringy. I’m not sure why maybe because it just funny and I think no one would care cuz most of us are desensitized to sexual comments

Does being called cringey lead to shame or are cringey people just shameless?

“Vergonha alheia” in Portuguese.