[ SECRET POST #7102 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #7102 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 15 secrets from Secret Submission Post #1014.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

01. https://cdn.imgchest.com/files/02eaedaa22d3.png

Transcript by OP

[fscom]

I wish there was an online list of fanfic cringe I could check from time to time to make sure I'm not guilty of it.

Like...are my references to genitalia gauche or outdated?

Is this sexy term now offensive?

Is this fucking verb considered overused?

Are there cool new coitus vocab words I could be using?

I just want to stay in the loop!

[(Anonymous)]

Something I wrote wound up on WTF Fanfic (are they still around?) once but I wasn't mad, I just thought it was funny.

[(Anonymous)]

Cringe is one of those words I want to put on a high shelf until people learn the actual definition. Everyone uses it to mean genuine or heartfelt these days.

[(Anonymous)]

So what's your definition

[(Anonymous)]

Cringe as a noun ala "this fic is cringe" means to be servile. The verb is to shrink back in disgust or fear. What people mean when they say that, though, is that it makes them embarrassed and they then displace that embarrassment on the creator of the "cringy" thing to try and make the creator embarrassed. These days they'll say that about anything genuine or not jaded because god forbid we have any kind of real human connection.

[iff_and_xor]

Cringe as a noun ala "this fic is cringe" means to be servile.

Can I ask where this definition comes from?

My understanding was that “this is cringe” comes pretty directly from “this makes me cringe in embarrassment”. But I can’t remember if that’s something that’s been clearly documented by linguists or not.

[Edit: I do still have a problem with the term, I don’t like that as an adjective/noun it implies “cringe” to be an inherent quality of the thing rather than a highly subjective emotional reaction by a viewer.]

[iff_and_xor]

Sorry, another addition…

Everyone uses it to mean genuine or heartfelt these days.

That seems incomplete at best. There’s a clear negative connotation and I don’t think “genuine or heartfelt” is even a necessary component. I see people commonly call things “cringe” for being overly ironic too.

[(Anonymous)]

Can I ask where this definition comes from?

From the dictionary. It's also how the noun was used in most novels pre the-last-twenty-years.

I can understand taking the verb, to cringe, and making it a new noun. But the verb is about the person talking, not the object. Let's take the close verb "flinch" as an example. I could say "That book was so flinch" and you could probably understand that I, personally, flinched when reading it. It doesn't say anything about the actual work. But people are trying to make cringe be something inherent to a work, and not to their reaction to it. "That work is so cringe" doesn't just mean that the person feels embarrassed for the creator but that the work itself is an embarrassment and the creator should feel embarrassed for doing it.

[(Anonymous)]

Your experience is definitely not universal.

[(Anonymous)]

wut? I have never seen that. Cringe as a noun is something that is embarrassing. The “I’m a cool mom” types are cringe. They’re also cringey.

[(Anonymous)]

Nobody uses it to mean genuine? People use it to mean awkward or embarrassing, as in "this makes me cringe."

[(Anonymous)]

ayrt is being sardonic; the people saying it don't mean "genuine" or "heartfelt", they mean the same "awkward and embarrassing" that you do, it's just that genuine and heartfelt work is, reliably, the main thing they get so embarrassed about.

[(Anonymous)]

Where are you hanging out that "everyone" does that?

Cringe has always meant something that gives the commenter secondhand embarrassment, nothing more, nothing else.

Sometimes people say that about genuine and heartfelt things, but IME it's usually the opposite. People obviously faking being cool or rich or smart, or someone speaking super confidently while completely factually wrong and everyone else knows it, are some of the things I see called cringe the most.

[(Anonymous)]

If they're only saying that it gave the commenter secondhand embarrassment then a thing could never be cringe. I rarely hear anyone say "this made me cringe" or "this gave me the cringes." I hear "This is cringey" a lot which makes the cringe a property held by the object, not an emotion felt by the commenter.

[(Anonymous)]

...why can't a thing give someone secondhand embarrassment?

I think Kash Patel's childrens' books are considered universally cringe. Why can't they be?

[(Anonymous)]

Things can give someone second hand embarrassment. The thing is not inherently embarrassing. And thus the person who made it is not embarrassing. By attaching cringe to the thing, the onus of the embarrassment is being shifted from the person feeling it to the creator of the thing. Otherwise why would OP be afraid of being cringe? If they create what they want, why would that be embarrassing? Why care about making something "cringe" unless the people who find it so are shifting that emotion onto the maker?

[iff_and_xor]

As an amateur linguistics nerd, I’d love something like this, just to see the trends in language and how they’re perceived.

(Not judging your language, just analyzing it, as they say.)

[(Anonymous)]

Err, just read more?

[volkameria]

Yes, please. I'm terminally offline, I need to know what terms people actually are using in fandom spaces.

[(Anonymous)]

Love the phrase terminally offline, I'm going to start using that. I usually just say I am out of the loop but I like yours better.

Hello, crawler!

[(Anonymous)]

Don’t mind me, just here to show some DCC love <3

[(Anonymous)]

That's fanficrants and it wasn't actually useful because what's gauche or sexy is extremely subjective. See every come/cum discussion.

Plus, at a certain point, people just raced to complain about the New Cool Thing just to be the first one to call it cringe.

[(Anonymous)]

You're literally fine. No one is being physically harmed by terms in a fanfic.

[(Anonymous)]

Annoyingly, such a list (and anyone visibly following it) would become cringe itself in about 0.5 seconds, because there's nothing internet culture hates more than being told what to do.