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Recently there's been a lot of negativity against so called "Cringe Culture", what with images like theese:

Now on the surface I don't have a problem with this. If anything, I think it's good that this kind of shitty exploitative behavior gets called out. But it got me thinking. Exactly what does and what doesn't qualify as "Cringe culture"?
If we go by the definition that it's about mocking people for doing or producing things that are genrally seen as "cringy", then doesn't a lot of the internet partake in cringe culture quite often, KYM included? Entries on stuff like Time to killed people and Chris-chan certainly seem to qualify. Heck my own profile page references Sonichu.
And couldn't the culture surrounding movies that are celebrated for their lack of quality such as The Room or Plan 9, also be considered cringe culture?

Please discuss

From what I've seen, when people complain about "cringe culture", they tend to talk exclusively about the area of the culture that's known for shitting out cringe compilations for everything as if that's the entirety of it.

To me, cringe culture covers everything you just said, since the popularity surrounding those things is solely due to how awful and "cringey" they are. Cringe culture goes far beyond things like shitting on bad fanart.

I have to ask, this is so called "Cringe Culture" even real? At first glance it sounds to me like another tumblrs bollocks again like "Rape Culture". But I am not going to deny the plausibility of properly analysing and classifying it either.

If bad arts are criteria for "Cringe Culture" then I suppose Potato Jesus was also a part of cringe culture, yet a lot laughed and had fun.

Let us take a step back and look at what this "Cringe" is. To me, cringe is a reflex of seeing something of a mixture of embarrassing, awkward, and disgusting so awful that we are also partly affected by it as if we were the cause of it ourselves. "Cringey" or "Cringeworthy" stuffs are things that causes those reflexes. So now we have a baseline of what of a "Cringe" is. A reflex to something we do not desire, something we feel that it is disgusting. Time to move on.

So what draws people to this "Culture"? Usually after we have cringed, we often look for the source of that awfulness and says thing like "What the fuck.", or other phrases which expresses our displeasure at it in attempt to shame it or shoo it away. Part retributive mechanism (friend slaps back of your head for lulz, you slap him back and laugh together, if left not responded, we feel seething anger) part hate (hate, as in feeling of wanting to remove undesired elements from our presence or knowledge).

Then what is the main draw which attracts people to this culture? I believe it is: The pleasure of removing unwanted elements (usually why some people love to clean; in this case, attempts of getting rid of sick, disgusting stuffs out of our view) combined with partial pleasure/calmness of having completed a retribution (in a fun playful way, according to our brain).

So who is at fault here? A bunch of guys having a cringe fest for shit and giggles, digging up and comparing cringeworthy stuffs and have some lulz within their circle or even went to say it to the sources face; or should it be those sick fucks who cannot tame their shit and tries to have it accepted and justified out in the open like CWC.

I think the answer is both. Digging through others personal stuffs that is closed to the public and drag it out to the open for laughs is not okay (maybe okay in some serious situation like CWC, seriously that guy needs help, but on the other hand, internet infamy might pushed him to where he is today). Also, having the wisdom to know that your stuffs in your closet is disgusting and laying low is more preferable than get it out in the open and yell to sue for acceptance like generic tumblrites e.g. 500lbs land whales in bikinis trying to 'show off' and sue for 'body positivity' and 'fat acceptance' and accusing the 'cringe culture' of guilt when the reception is vastly less than ideal.

But, Clownfish. What about earnest embarrassing public mistakes? That game journalist guy who cannot play Cuphead for a damn should not be made a cringeworthy stuff then because his work has to be public. I beg your pardon. Normally, a public slip up might be funny, but what came after is the key. If that guy owns up his ineptitude and be humble and earnest about it. Nobody would laugh at him, because everybody understand that we make mistakes. However, he have chosen to be a dick about it, wrote a rubbish article and calling it 'Dark Souls' to 'save' his face and justify it without 'losing' his pride, and he did so knowingly in the public where 'sick, disgusting, embarrassing, awkward' should not be displayed deliberately if one wishes to avoid the ill publicity. And that has made him, a "cringeworthy" person. He sealed his fate when he slipped on a banana peel and calls it the world ice skating championship.

Back to the original question that I have asked. Is this 'Cringe Culture' real? I think it is not really a culture, because while this shit is older than the internet itself. It is not really a customary thing or acceptable thing for both ways; dragging out the cringe, and displaying it out yourself. Same goes for 'Rape Culture' (maybe for some backwater draconian Islamic nations, but I am not too sure if that is bullshit of the religion itself or the people of that country themselves, a matter for another time).

Tumblr pushes people who make fanarts of Steven Universe to commit suicide but when people make fun of their own fanarts it's suddenly not okay?

Those cuphead fanarts would make anyone puke, i bet those people on Tumblr who are complaining in the image up here are their authors.

Man, it is Tumblr you are talking about; wrongthink is a capital offence there.

@dungerdolf kind of a false dilema, in case you haven't noticed this website was also against that, they are arguing against both.

Still, mockery isn't nice but it is sometimes warranted, but in my opinion it must be for a good reason, for example anti-vaxxers deserve the mockery they get, not only are they harmful they don't deserve to be taken seriously, fan artists? Not really, honestly they aren't really hurting anyone.

I've always interpreted it as, and from what I've seen, the main outcry against it is, the cringe compilations plastered on the internet to humiliate "bad artists", having thousands of people make fun of them for their art, thus killing their self esteem and making them quit forever instead of improving, all under the guise of "criticism".

I don't think there is anything wrong with finding a certain picture cringy, laughing at it, and sharing it with a few friends to all share a laugh. I do think there is a problem posting it on Youtube under the label "cringe", putting the artist on a pedestal for the whole internet to laugh at and mock. One is a harmless, if not mean spirited, laugh with friends, the other is sending vitriol at the artist who may be a kid for all anyone knows.

tl:dr Laughing at cringe is OK, trying to get thousands of people to mock the cringe-maker in their face is not.

"He who fights monsters must see to it in the process that he too does not become a monster"

The cringe culture originally started out as people against actual stupid shit, like all those political fanart crap that tries to push a agenda or such but has devolved. All harassing people who just started drawing does is deter people who are serious about bettering their art from practicing enough to get gud.

If a grown adult has to pick on a child to feel good about themselves then they're fucked up in the head.

Cringe culture is perfectly fine as long as it exists in a bubble and you're not activity going out of your way to bother other people.

I love cringe comps but its not like I go on Tumbler or DA and mock people to their face.

If you do shit like that then you're just as cringey as the ones you're making fun of

There is this lol cow me and my friend like to watch. His videos are so odd and embarrassing we just like watching them because its so confusing and laughable.

I thought about shearing his videos but he only has like 2k subs and the people who actually watch him unironically are pretty supportive. I don't want people going on his channel mocking and making fun of him openly so he can see it. That wouldn't be funny, it would just be down right sad.

It would go from some random making odd videos to a guy being bullied. That's not what cringe humor is suppose to be about. Cringe humor is about viewing someone with a lack of self awareness thrusting themselves or other people into an absurd situation.

The lack of understanding why what they are doing is absurd is where the humor comes from. Whether it be alienating the people around them, Them building a certen image of themselves up in their head that isn't representative of what other people see or just general lack of common social skills. NOT them being put up on public display and mocked. You can argue thats part of it but I don't think most people gain any sort of amusement out of humiliating other people and the ones that do are just bully assholes.

To back this up, look at scripted cringe humor like The Office. The humor from Michel isn't from the people around them mocking him and putting him down but from his utter lack of self awareness and his inability to recognize how awkward and strange he is which in most episodes puts the people around him in an absurd situation which makes the viewers of the show laugh, and cringe.

meh, I did a little rant about this a while ago and personally I'd like to see this whole 'cringe' meme/buzzword die but tbh there IS a time & place for it.

I'm pretty sure for the most part it isn't that seeing kids ramble about political opinions or chris chandler isn't cringeworthy it's just that there's a lot of self righteous shit people do to attack people they regard as cringeworthy that comes off as cringeworthy and lolcow-like in itself, especially when it's done to someone that really isn't even neccessairly cringeworthy