Have you ever been embarrassed, ashamed, embarrassed, to the point of wanting to disappear underground? This moment of unease, horrible for you but (very) funny for others, has a name: the Cringe. A scathing humor, which feeds on these moments of embarrassment and arouses real enthusiasm among 15-30 year olds. But how can we explain this penchant for the bizarre, even the ridiculous? Amélie Boukhobza, clinical psychologist, analyzes this phenomenon.
Cringe, or the art of pushing embarrassment to the extreme
You only need to take a look around the Web to realize that cringe is not a micro-trend: the hashtag #cringe has a total of 18.3 million publications on Instagram and nearly a million videos on YouTube. Some channels have even made it their specialty, by stringing together compilations of embarrassing videos from TikTok.
“The term comes from English. Literally, it means to tense up, to cower in the face of something embarrassing,” explains Amélie Boukhobza. “In a world obsessed with image and perfection, I find it rather interesting to see this humor appear which assumes embarrassment. Which plays with awkwardness. Which dares to go against the codes”continues the expert.
Making fun of yourself, showing your faults, your failures… is ultimately a healthier way of dealing with what bothers us. Rather than living with silent discomfort, we push the situation to its climax. “We exaggerate the awkwardness, we expose what could shame us. And we laugh about it“, analyzes the practitioner.
On the networks, Internet users love all these little “cringe” situations of everyday life: kissing someone who finally extended their hand, laughing at a joke that you didn’t understand, hitting a bay window head-on… or even declaring your love in a very clumsy way.
“When watching these videos, we almost physically feel embarrassment. Shame. Embarrassment… but for someone else. We laugh because we see the discrepancy and we perceive the gap between the image that the person wants to give of themselves… and what the scene actually shows”notes the expert.
An affection for the ridiculous, which reflects today’s mores: tired of perfection, young people are embracing this new authenticity and vulnerability (do you break your face in the middle of the street? No problem, that’s a very cringe moment). But for Amélie Boukhobza, this humor is not necessarily new.
“Embarrassment comedy has existed for a long time, in films, series, shows… The difference today is more due to the scale of the phenomenon. With social networks, these situations are multiplying. Everyone can put themselves on the stage. And everyone can, at one point, produce cringe out of clumsiness, out of overconfidence… or simply because we don’t always see the effect we are producing”she emphasizes.
Ultimately, laughing at others would relieve us (they are humans like any other)
If cringe is so entertaining, and also refreshing, it is because it makes us understand that vulnerability is not a defect… I am not perfect, but neither is the other (my neighbor, my friend, my colleague…).
“Cringe talks a lot about the way others look at us, the fear of being ridiculous, this very human anxiety of being judged, misperceived, exposed. And watching someone experience this moment in our place provokes both laughter and slight relief. As if, for once, it wasn’t us who were on stage. That’s surely also why this humor works so much”admits Amélie Boukhobza.
A taste for difference that can be surprising among young adults: an age where we often seek to please, to control our image and to avoid any embarrassing situation. Are all 15-30 year olds so self-deprecating? Maybe.
“I actually find it quite interesting that as a teenager, you can have enough distance to play with all this. It’s quite funny”estimates the psychologist.
Ultimately, this success of the cringe perhaps also tells something else: an evolution of the relationship with the eyes of others. Where embarrassment was once singled out, it is today diverted into collective play. On social networks, embarrassment is shared… and ends up bringing people together.