I don’t know if anyone else has already thought of this, but it seems like “cringe” is when you’re witnessing a social interaction that you’re not supposed to see. This forces you to literally shrink back and move away from the situation. That way, you don’t end up being associated with the misgiving, and you don’t ruin the social fabric by hearing everything that was said, and spreading gossip.
I think this is probably more common among autistic people, who are more sensitive to social mistakes and are more easily traumatized by them.
To me, ‘cringe’ is a sort of perverse pleasure/pain combo in mentally interacting with intense embarrassment, whether firsthand or secondhand, and driving yourself deeper into it – becoming a compulsion over time that you can’t stop. Most cringe is secondhand, but I experienced firsthand first.
On the one hand, firsthand cringe has more of that ‘sting’ that both hurts and stimulates – you know, when you just imagine the most painfully embarrassing situation you could be in, and it feels like stabbing yourself through a giant ‘frog’ flower holder, like some kind of mental acupuncture, it’s painful but it’s an addictive experience
But then there’s also, like, the confrontational secondhand cringe, and it feels lighter and more fun because there’s this little part of you that loves being the ‘villain’ in this sort of inconsequential teen-drama-esque internet feud. But it’s nicer because you only partially feel the embarrassment you feel they should, as if you’re ‘passing through them’, mostly it’s just a ‘laugh at the clown’ kind of thing, but it still has to have a little of that “I am stricken with the existential nightmare that being you would be for you if you understood how ridiculous you are”. And if you interact you feel like you’re playing both sides of a chess game because most ‘cringe’ people broadcast their very silly emotions very fluently, so you can immerse yourself in being them, which is why it’s so easyto feel secondhand embarrassment on their behalf in the first place, while also poking them.
It’s like intrusive self-trauma from compulsively imagining situations you’d call yourself ‘cringe’ or ‘cancer’ for, if you were a thirteen-year-old on 2015 Youtube.
