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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   1342 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 21, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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The issue is that in the modern era being cringe is directly deleterious to your social and even financial circumstances. Nobody wants to associate with people who are cringe, and when connections are pretty much the best and most reliable way to get a job these days or move upwards socially or financially, you get what you incentivize. Especially when we live on a planet of cops.

Again, it's not even really an age thing; if I was an African warlord I would not give a single fig about being cringe as long as I got to shoot everyone who saw. It's about security and power, both things for which demand greatly exceeds supply.

From as long as I can remember, the true essence of cringe is being un-self aware of how your behavior is perceived, and breaking social norms whilst lacking the social capital to get away with it. The larger the audience, the worse the transgression/the greater the social capital required to overcome it.

So one defense is to have every action and phrase dipped in layers of irony so if something does run afoul of a social norm you can plausibly claim to be in on the joke, and thus almost no act or word can ever have full sincerity behind it since now its actually harder to tell what the hell the norms are if nobody can take them seriously. Just, you know, try to remember which level of irony you're on.

Millenials I think invented this particular approach, but in interacting with Gen Z, I conclude that they seem to have totalized it.

The other approach is to be at least partly aware of your behavior, but demonstrate that you simply do not care, nor take the situation seriously, and effectively 'no sell' any shame in the situation.

These are both exhausting to maintain, if you ask me.

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