In a TikTok video posted by Katie Whitney, who has 2.5 million followers, she looks straight at the camera and says bluntly: “This video is for Cynthia Erivo. If you’re not Cynthia Erivo… you can keep scrolling.” Then her tone changes, and her voice gets softer—like how someone might talk to their puppy: “Hi Cynthia. Hi baby. Hey baby. How are you?” It’s hard to watch—or, as people say now, cringe. One commenter says, “I feel traumatized.” Others share photos of a stunned-looking Erivo and wonder, “What if the Wicked star actually saw this video?” Cringe!
Now 25, Whitney started making this kind of content—”weird skits”—when she was 20. She’s part of what’s known online as CringeTok, a corner of the internet focused on content that makes you cringe. In many ways, it’s a reaction to the fear of being “cringe,” which is spreading into all parts of life—from social media to classrooms to the workplace.
Embarrassment isn’t new, and comedy has been enjoying secondhand shame for decades, from Fawlty Towers to Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Office to Amandaland. But some mental health professionals see cringe as a relatively new form of shame. It’s now so common that academics study it, discuss it, lament it, and—most importantly—blame it for why so many people, especially young people, aren’t living life to the fullest.
According to a Yahoo/YouGov poll this year, the fear of coming across as cringe has stopped more than half of Gen Z (those born between the mid-1990s and early 2010s) from expressing themselves freely online. And 55% of those surveyed said it had stopped them from opening up emotionally. New York University professor and writer Ocean Vuong has expressed concern that his students are becoming “more and more self-conscious about trying.” In an interview with ABC News, he said: “There’s a surveillance culture around social media. And they’ll say: ‘I want to be a poet, I want to be a good writer, but it’s a bit cringe’… This ‘cringe culture’ is ‘I don’t want to be seen as trying and putting effort into my dreams.'”
A boomer saying someone has ‘rizz’ or is ‘delulu’ without irony? Cringe.
So what is “cringe”? According to Roger Giner-Sorolla, a professor of social psychology at the University of Kent, it’s become a slang term for the feeling of “vicarious shame.” This, he says, puts someone who has done something embarrassing or even morally shameful “under the dim regard of other people.” Mark Beal, a communications professor at Rutgers University who has written several books about Gen Z, would “put it in the bucket of feeling awkward, feeling embarrassed, feeling ‘uncool.'”
A key part of “cringe” is a lack of self-awareness. “The implication of cringe is that if you had any self-awareness, you would realize that this reflects really poorly on you,” says Giner-Sorolla. “A good example,” says Dean Burnett, a Cardiff-based neuroscientist, “is when the older generation tries to get involved with younger generations’ trends and behaviors—that’s cringe.” Like a boomer saying someone has “rizz” or is “delulu” without irony. It’s the act of “trying to do something and failing, but not knowing you’re failing at it.”
The list of things Gen Z finds cringe is huge: sincerity, trying too hard, enthusiasm—any behavior that isn’t nonchalant. But, paradoxically, also inauthenticity. Then a big one is millennials—pretty much anything they do, say, think, or wear. Skinny jeans, the crying-laughing emoji, “the millennial pause,” trainer socks, and referencing which Harry Potter house they’d be in.
Natalie Soibatian, 24, a visitor experience coordinator…A curator at a museum in the US made a TikTok video last year about her concern that being “cringe” is “crippling an entire generation.” Has she ever felt held back by a fear of being cringe? “Definitely,” she says.
She remembers going to a club in Los Angeles a few years ago where, she says, “No one was dancing.” That’s not how she imagined nightlife would be when she was growing up, but she understands it. For a generation that feels constantly watched, she explains, “It’s a fear of being seen and being perceived.” She’s not immune to this herself and used to feel the same way: “You look to your friends,” she says. “Are they joining in?”
“Everyone is afraid of being recorded,” she says. “Whether it’s their dancing skills or just taking part and looking silly, nobody wants to join in unless someone else starts, and nobody wants to start anymore.”
A fashion content creator online, Soibatian also sees a fear of being cringe as the reason behind the more conservative style choices she notices in people around her. “People are much less likely to experiment with their fashion,” she says. It’s easy to see why—even for older people, looking back at photos of the bold fashion choices from their twenties can feel deeply embarrassing. Imagine if those tube tops and questionable blue mascaras were online, visible to everyone forever.
Beal compares the Gen Z experience to the movie The Truman Show. Except it’s not just Truman whose life is on display—it’s almost everyone’s. But unlike Jim Carrey’s Truman, who doesn’t realize he’s the star of a reality show about his own life, Gen Z is very aware of it. “They are the first generation who, starting at a very young age, have joined platforms like Snapchat, TikTok, and Instagram, where every pose, every look, every smile is either being judged or feels like it is.”
And this isn’t just a problem for people with millions of followers. Soibatian has a few hundred followers and still struggles with the idea that people she knows personally will see her posts. “I think it’s always going to feel like someone is looking over my shoulder,” she says.
For others, having more followers makes it easier. “It was harder for me when I had a smaller platform, because the comments and engagement felt more personal,” says Whitney, who started posting YouTube videos of herself when she was eight. She noticed a change when she reached about a million followers. “When you hit those numbers, it all kind of fades,” she says. “It feels more distant from me than when I had a smaller, more personal following, where I recognized certain people commenting and coming back, and it felt like a community. But now that I’m at this scale, it just rolls off me a bit.”
Humans aren’t psychologically built to handle the judgment of so many people. “Biologically or culturally, we’re adapted to living in relatively small groups,” says Giner-Sorolla. “We’re not adapted to having millions of eyes on us.” When we lived in smaller, fully offline communities, we could adjust to fit in with those around us—or choose not to. “But when you have not just a million pairs of eyes, but 1,000 different standards and 1,000 different subcultures judging you, that can be very overwhelming.”
The gap between your online and offline self can also be a source of potential cringe. “Your profile is you in a way,” says Whitney. For her, if you’ve carefully built a “cool person” image online, it’s “much scarier to go out to concerts, gigs, restaurants, or dates and just be yourself, because there’s always the risk that someone has a phone…”It’s like there’s a constant red button flashing, with people recording you all the time. She says it can affect some people so much that “you almost don’t feel safe going outside.” It’s scary to go to gigs, restaurants, or dates and just be yourself.
What counts as cringe or not depends on who you’re talking to. “It’s all from your point of view,” says Giner-Sorolla. “It’s like you have these rules about how someone should act, how someone should be cool.” When 26-year-old Stefania Marzelia started posting stories about starting her coffee company, Sips, in Chicago, she noticed a post from someone from her hometown. The comment said something like: “Oh my goodness, there’s this girl from my high school posting barista content. It’s so cringy, it’s so embarrassing.” She remembers cringing herself and thinking, “I shouldn’t be doing this.”
But then she changed her mind. “When people don’t follow the norm, or they put their heart into something they create… I think Gen Z is very quick to jump on that and call it cringe.”
Marzelia, who has nearly 600,000 followers on TikTok, is very exposed. “We are now so connected to everyone’s thoughts, feelings, and concerns.” There’s also the fear of going viral for something unintentionally cringe. “You can become a laughingstock to millions of people with just one post,” says Giner-Sorolla.
Georgie Gee, a child psychotherapist based in London, says that before the internet, “identity was formed by hanging out with real people you liked, and you identified with their values.” Now, she says, “there are so many different voices… if you’re exposed to that from a very early age, it can interfere with your normal adolescent development of identity.”
So can Gen Z get over the fear of cringe? According to Giner-Sorolla, the way to survive is to “narrow your focus… have a group of people you can be authentic with, and even if others think your authenticity is cringe, at least you’ve got your people.” Burnett agrees. “Having connections, having friends, having people you can relate to and share with—that’s good for the brain,” he says. What about thousands of online connections? “That’s not a healthy default, and that’s what I think holds people back.” While everyone would benefit from having a community, he says, “not everyone benefits from an audience.”
Gee recommends questioning who the voice inside your head is, the one that warns you not to do something for fear of being cringe. Ideally with the help of a good therapist, look at that judgmental, bullying part and start to challenge it. She also says there might be comfort in the idea that “we’re not a fixed entity—that’s quite a nice feeling, isn’t it? And that we learn through our mistakes, we grow and develop.”
Another fairly obvious option for those feeling stuck online might be to log off—or at least be a little less active. Beal has heard from his students that planned daylong digital detoxes have sometimes turned into a week or month-long “break from content.” He recommends “getting away from that phone altogether, and just hiking, walking, exploring life.” Whitney refers to this in more twenty-something slang as “touching grass.”
Luckily, there does seem to be a shift toward reclaiming the coolness of enthusiasm. For Giner-Sorolla, it might be about choosing “your object of passion—that itself is cool.” Burnett says: “It’s important for people to be able to say, ‘Look, this is what I like, this is what I enjoy,’ and at some point you have to put your own needs, your own desires, your own wellbeing ahead of other people’s.”There’s also freedom in being openly cringe—something Whitney has discovered. Online, an idea called “climbing cringe mountain” has become popular. The New York Times described it as “an unavoidable part of growing up for Gen Z, who have had their entire lives—even the embarrassing moments—documented online.” There’s even a meme-mantra: “To be cringe is to be free,” which has been adopted as a rallying cry. As Marzelia puts it: “The world opens up for you once you get past cringe.”
The first time Whitney posted her cringe content, she says it felt like a weight was lifted. “It was like, ‘Oh, who cares, now it’s out there, it’s out there… now I just get to do whatever.'”
For Soibatian, she’s found a way to reframe things that might help anyone stuck at the base of cringe mountain. “If someone is clearly judging another person for doing something they consider cringe, that, to me, is cringy.”
Frequently Asked Questions
Here is a list of FAQs about the article You could be laughed at by millions can Gen Z overcome the fear of being cringe written in a natural tone with clear direct answers
BeginnerLevel Questions
1 What does cringe actually mean in this context
Cringe is that secondhand embarrassment you feel when someone does something awkward overly earnest or tries too hard to be cool In Gen Z culture its the ultimate social sinthe fear of looking uncool
2 Why is Gen Z so afraid of being cringe
Because they grew up online Every awkward moment can be recorded screenshotted and shared with millions The internet never forgets so the risk of social humiliation feels huge
3 Is being cringe always a bad thing
No The article argues that being cringe often means youre being authentic trying something new or expressing yourself without fear Many of the most creative and successful people started out looking cringe
4 Can you give me a simple example of cringe behavior
Posting a passionate unpolished dance video on TikTok with bad lighting and a cheesy song Its vulnerable not perfectand thats what makes people wince
5 How does the fear of being cringe hold people back
It stops them from posting speaking up trying new hobbies or sharing their real opinions Theyd rather stay silent than risk looking silly
Intermediate Advanced Questions
6 Is the fear of being cringe a Gen Zspecific problem or has it always existed
Its always existed but the scale is new Before youd be laughed at by your class or town Now you could be laughed at by millions online That amplifies the fear exponentially
7 Whats the difference between cringe and just being bad at something
Cringe is about social awkwardness and a mismatch between effort and outcome Being bad at something isnt cringe if youre humble about it Cringe happens when youre trying too hard to seem cool and failing
8 How can Gen Z actually overcome this fear
By practicing cringe exposure Start small
