What Is 'Cringe' and Why Can’t We Stop Talking About It?

Research explores what makes us cringe and why we need to share it.

Reviewed by Jessica Schrader

Key points

• Cringe is having a moment, with millions of posts being shared online about it.
• We feel cringe when we observe someone in an awkward attempt to do something to give a positive impression.
• Sharing cringe may make us feel like we know the social rules to which the cringy person seems oblivious.

Cringe is having a moment. Millions of posts with the hashtag are shared online, and entire forums on Reddit are dedicated to discussing what makes us cringe. We’re all just too familiar with this feeling where it’s almost physically painful to watch someone do something embarrassing without being aware of how they come across. Maybe it’s a wedding speech that’s trying to be funny without success, a teenager trying to shoot a TikTok video in an oh-so-popular tourist spot, or a friend trying to show off with some expensive but ugly purchase.

But what exactly is cringe, and why do we need to share it with others? After all, if it’s so painful to watch the wedding speech where all the jokes fall flat, wouldn’t it be better for us and everyone else if we just forgot about it and never mentioned it? Instead, we seem to have an urge to spread the cringe.

New research by Brianna Escoe from the University of Louisiana and colleagues (2024) took a systematic approach to find out what cringe is. First of all, they established that we feel cringe when we observe someone in an awkward attempt to do something that’s trying to make a positive impression. For example, we’d cringe at someone trying to be funny, but we wouldn’t cringe when someone is experiencing something negative without trying to make a positive impression, like someone who had an accident and deserves sympathy. Next, the researchers showed that we love to talk about cringe. Participants in an experiment saw cringy social media posts that had been edited to show off and pleasant posts without a cringe factor. Participants then chose which posts to discuss in a forum with others and were more likely to choose the cringy posts, although they didn’t actually like them or find them pleasant to look at.

Finally, the researchers explored this puzzle: Why do we want to share cringy content when we don’t even like it and we experience negative emotions? Another experiment provided an answer, in which participants judged a mommy blogger who either sang well or poorly at a school performance. Participants who shared the good performance shared something nice and pleasant, but participants who shared the bad performance actually got a little boost for themselves by doing so.

When sharing something cringe, we get to roll our eyes together with others and feel like we’re all in the know and wouldn’t commit a social faux pas like the one we’re sharing. In other words, sharing cringe makes us feel like we know the social rules that the cringy person seems oblivious to, and we’re not falling for their clumsy attempts to make a good impression. By sharing the cringe, we form a team with others who are savvier than the cringy actor who’s trying hard and failing to impress.