When Do You Cringe?

This is kind of a sequel to Wednesday's entry.  I was reading a review of ABC's Abbott Elementary on Roger Ebert.com and it mentioned this Vox article that decrees Parks & Recreation, Harry Potter, and Hamilton to be "cringe."

There are different reasons, all of which are really just the author's opinions and not really backed by anything like factual evidence.

• Parks & Rec is "cringe" because the author (who's probably a Millennial or Gen Z) is disillusioned with Hillary, Obama, and Biden because they didn't slay all the worlds ills, wave her student loan debt away, and buy her a pony.
• Harry Potter is "cringe" because the author revealed herself to be a shitbag transophobe.  (I'll agree to that one.)
• And Hamilton is just not cool according to an episode of Gossip Girl, which itself stopped being cool a long time ago.  And the cool kids think our Founding Fathers were all slave owning, Native American slaying psychopaths and this play somehow glorifies that.

The thing with Twitter and Facebook and whatever, is there are always people desperate for attention by ragging on stuff.  Which is really just an extension of what pundits and critics have been doing for centuries in newspapers, books, radio, TV, theater, and so on.  I don't listen to Twitter or Facebook or Vox to decide what I think is "cringe."

A lot of things that might be "cringe" to someone else I don't really mind that much, in large part because of nostalgia filters.  The original Star Trek, and the 90s shows, and the original Star Wars movies can look kind of cheesy these days, but I don't really care.  They're still good stories and there are a lot of good memories.  I can easily rewatch old episodes of The Simpsons, South Park, Family Guy, Twilight Zone, Married With Children, MST3K, Earth Final Conflict, Transformers, GI Joe, Robotech, and Due South without any problem at all.

There are other things that I do find "cringe."  Like trying to watch Dukes of Hazzard or PeeWee's Playhouse or American Gladiators.  Nope.  I cringed.  The nostalgia filter didn't work.  Or just they don't really have good stories or acting or...anything really.  I'm pretty sure I mentioned when I watched some old Price is Right episodes on Pluto TV the games were mostly still entertaining, but a lot of Bob Barker's patter--cringe!

I suppose there would be books that if I tried to read them again I might cringe.  Like Hardy Boys books or shit like that I read when I was a kid.  But stuff like the Wingman books or Robotech books that I know aren't written well are still fun to re-read on occasion as escapism.

Music I was never really into much that makes me cringe now.  I suppose Journey or Billy Joel or Night Ranger would make someone else cringe, but fuck them.  Don't Stop Believin!

But anyway, unlike the author of that Vox article, I don't really decide something is "cringe" because it's not cool or the author or an actor or producer or whatever turned out to be a piece of shit.  Or childish disillusionment with the political process.  It's mostly stuff that just doesn't work for me on any meaningful level anymore.  If that makes any sense. 

I mean I'll still watch a movie Harvey Weinstein produced or Kevin Spacey stars in or old episodes of Chapelle's Show even though he's a bigger piece of shit than JK Rowling.  (Not for any racial reason but because he's also a transophobe who recently blackmailed his town into not including low income housing in a development project because he didn't want poor people living near him.)  If you try to avoid everything that's "cringe" or "cancelled" in one way or another, you'd be left with almost nothing.  You pretty much couldn't watch any Hollywood movie since ever because there's always been shitheads running the studios, producing the movies, and starring in the movies.  Most rock stars weren't and aren't saints either.  And authors...well, there are probably a lot of those classic ones who make JK Rowling seem like a saint.  Even Shakespeare would be "cringe;" I mean, have you ever read or watched The Merchant of Venice?  And just the title Taming of the Shrew is pretty misogynist.  Cringe!  And it's not like Big Publishing was a squeaky clean industry in general.

Basically the whole fucking world is cringe, so like what you like and if it don't hurt nobody else then the hell with it.  Certainly don't listen to some lame Millennial probably living with twelve people in a studio apartment in New York who writes for some third-rate website for exposure.  And don't listen to me either.  Listen to the voices in your head--so long as they aren't telling you to kill or anything like that.

And really for Hollywood or Big Publishing or any of those, the problem when you try to appease people like this "author" is that it's only temporary.  As soon as it's not fashionable anymore they'll dump you and whine about it being "cringe."  And/or they'll keep pushing you for whatever their cause d'jour is.  But for that matter, the MAGA types will turn on you the second you don't go along with whatever their latest conspiracy theory is.  If you disagree even slightly or argue for common sense or decency, they'll proclaim you "woke" and dump you.  Like one day I saw the search engine DuckDuckGo that was heavily favored by the MAGA types because it wouldn't strain out fake news said that it was going to downvote Russian disinformation.  Not eliminate it, just move it down the list.  Immediately MAGA types start proclaiming it "woke" and fleeing to some other site to get their Russian disinformation.  So really catering to the far end of either spectrum probably isn't going to help you for long.

So what do you find "cringe?"  (Besides this entry or this blog in general.)