How Cringe Culture Poisons Politics | Re ContraPoints | TaraElla Report S6 E7

Hi everyone, welcome back to the sixth season of the TaraElla Report, where we try to come up with solutions to heal the polarized cultural and political environment in the West right now. Today, I want to continue my response to the recent ContraPoints video titled 'Cringe'. This time, I will be looking at the discussion around how online Cringe Culture affects the political landscape.

In the video, Natalie showcased multiple examples of so-called anti-SJW or anti-feminist cringe from back when this phenomenon was at its height, arguing that the purpose of these videos were to create contemptuous cringe for feminists and social justice activists through memefied versions of them. By and large, that kind of content produced its desired effect, making one side of politics have so much contempt for these people that they won't even take their ideas seriously, let alone debate them on an equal footing. This attitude in turn triggered a reactionary hostility from many supporters of feminism and social justice, who increasingly turned away from debate in the free market of ideas, and developed a somewhat paranoid attitude towards their critics.

To sum up, the biggest effect of this anti-SJW or anti-feminist cringe phenomenon was to polarize the debate around these issues so much that there is no appetite on either side for a healthy and nuanced discussion. To this day, three years later, both sides are still pretty much locked into their positions, with no appetite for conversation from either side, and with both sides continually policing the boundaries of acceptable opinion within their camp so that no one even dares to ask for a conversation with those on the opposite. I think the experience during 2015-17 serves to demonstrate how cringe culture can really poison the debate for everyone, dumb down complex issues, and force people into two neat camps that serve only the interests of establishment politicians one way or another. I really don't think it was a mere coincidence that political cringe culture peaked just around the 2016 US elections, and faded away quickly afterwards when it was no longer politically valuable. I was hoping Natalie would discuss this point more, actually.

The main problem with cringe culture is that it dumbs down everything, and turns every issue into essentially identity politics of some kind. For example, anti-feminist cringe doesn't actually deal with the merits or otherwise of feminist activists; it merely asserts that it would be cringe to be one of them.

There's no room for a nuanced take like, I support the value of gender-based equality on principle, but I also disagree with the critical theory view on patriarchal oppression, because it treats the genders like classes and thus minimizes the wide variety of individual experiences, and further because it essentially pits the genders against each other, which would lead to much unnecessary social conflict. In a debate where the terms are set up as whether feminism is cringe or not, there is no room for such a nuanced take. Instead, people are pressured into taking sides on whether feminism, without any qualifications, is cringe or not. Those of us who don't think that feminism is cringe would also end up getting lumped in with people who we otherwise vehemently disagree with, our important differences lost in this game we're forced to play. It's why someone like myself, who identifies as a moderate feminist but nevertheless disagrees with critical gender theory and its particular view of patriarchy, had such a hard time in those years. Meanwhile, the voices of those with views on either extreme became the most prominent ones, leading to a self-perpetuating cycle of cultural polarization.

If cringe culture is so bad, then how can we put an end to it, or at least make sure it doesn't return to its prominence during its recent peak? If I understood correctly, Natalie seems to suggest self-indifference as a way to combat cringe, since cringe thrives on insecurity and fear of embarrassment. However, some people have responded that this sounds too black pilled, too much like 'nothing matters anyway'. My alternative suggestion is that we should all think of life as a journey, an adventure. Don't think of life as a status competition, because at the end of the day, that is meaningless in the bigger scheme of things. Instead, think of life as what you can learn from it, what you gain as you go through the challenges while standing firm for your own values. I guess if everyone took this attitude, there would indeed be much less of a market for cringe culture, because there would be neither fear of embarrassment of the self, nor a motivation to harbor contempt for others.