Tim Robinson and the Golden Age of Cringe Comedy (Published 2023)

the predominant driver in pop culture humor morphed in the early 2000’s from irony to awkwardness. The switch is best explained as the difference between the mid 90’s, Larry-David-written Seinfeldian humor and later-career Larry in Curb Your Enthusiasm .

They’re not the same.

You know this because of how each makes you feel.

Awkwardness gives you a... See more

iron law of the internet: any movement or subculture will be judged by its most cringe members

Pop culture soothes and placates with a steady series of uncomplicated morality tales in predigested narratives where nothing ever really changes and so there’s no worry that the storyline will move in a way that hurts your feelings. Crowdsourced “content” is built on ephemerality.

“Where we once justified our daily anxieties by doom scrolling through bad news, we now post memes that epitomise our sense of mass existentialism, taking part in a sort of performative negativity that, as a result, protects us against reality,” says Holly Friend, deputy foresight editor at futures consultancy, The Future Laboratory.

Our around-the-clock overexposure to global human suffering, our daily feed of what we once considered catastrophic events — political, ecological, cultural — when combined with diminished attention spans, smaller and smaller chunks of content, and baked-in cross-platform imperatives to remain emotionally removed from any given person, place, or ev... See more

“People are deliberately waiting for the thrill of being offended”