Theses on the Philosophy of Cringe
Originally published to Cohost.
Some people are cringe Idealists. They believe that the world of values determines whether a given actor in it is deemed cringe. Imagine Dragons, they might say, with its brisk couplet verses and top-1000-word-filled choruses, is cringe because it butts heads with the 2020s' hurt-animal reaction against simple answers and hollow promises. Their grandiosity is unwelcome in a time where the evil of those in power is more visible than ever; their complex past with Mormonism is at odds with the contemporary unwillingness to forgive.
Some people are cringe Materialists. A cringe object, say the Materialists, need not interface with longwinded philosophy to announce its cringe-nature. "Imagine Dragons' images are disjoint and do not form a greater whole", "Imagine Dragons' heavy use of cliches such as gold without elaboration is uncompelling", "Imagine Dragons' rigidity of structure reminds one of a student dispassionately writing an essay for Mrs. Schaffer's AP Lang"-- these claims are supported by the text. The Idealists only muddy the waters by wondering about time-specific ideas that will be soon swept away by history. Of course the analyst engages with ideas, but these ideas (of which "Imagine dragons is cringe" is only one) arise firmly from the world of facts, and not vice versa.
You might say that the solution to this debate is the destruction of "cringe"-- in common parlance, "killing the part of one that cringes". While this is a liberating position (one I support wholeheartedly except in rhetorical instances like this essay) it is not a solution to our dilemma, because neither philosopher necessarily upholds the institution of "cringe". A cringe-Idealist might decry those who call Imagine Dragons cringe, for example, because the Idealist sees the critics as blindly parroting the values of their time.
At this you might fold your arms and say that the solution is compromise. But the elaboration of this position leaves much to be desired. If neither side can be fully rejected, we are left with mostly affirmative statements that cannot prove much of anything. Until a worldview with some backbone can be constructed, the resulting philosophy is powerful only because it is tautological.
No, there are no easy solutions. My own is controversial, and not without flaws itself, for it is less of a proof than a ritual. After Rachmaninoff, I call it the "all-night vigil". It is a lyric game for two or more players, as follows:
Listen to every Kidz Bop album, in order, without breaks. This is a meditation, and will be interrupted by sleep; this is not the weakness of your body, this is its mercy. Allow it. After those thirty-six hours, you and everyone you performed the vigil with must say, if indeed you believe it to be true:
"Wow, that sucked."
You may then talk about the text, but heed that period. If in your speech it resembles a semicolon, or god forbid a comma, the meditation has failed. Allow yourself this one claim, understood as true between you, if indeed it is true between you. Like a chandelier in a murder mystery movie, only after the sentence has hung longer than a breath can be held can you let it crash.