Meaning of cringey-ness | Babel Free

Examples

“I checked with Zac, and as the photographer snapped away, I made a heart shape with my hands at the camera for old time’s sake. / As the picture got projected up, I continued to ignore Luke’s ever-growing scowl. That’s what happens when a player gets played. / Zac nudged me in the ribs – I tensed any muscle I knew how to move. His dad was striding over. / Mr Lutas nodded up at the photo. / “I can’t believe you’d do that.” / Uh-oh. My heart-shaped cringey-ness didn’t seem as funny four-metres high. I wished both the real me and the giant photo me would disappear.”

“I’m a middle-age guy who analyzes politics for a living. My wife and I have two kids a little bit younger than you all. One is in college and one is supposed to start this fall (God willing). Since I’m an old codger who doesn’t use social media, I asked them for their thoughts on what makes a good graduation address. Their response: “Keep it short. Make it useful. Don’t be super cringey.” […] Don’t be super cringey. A little cringey-ness is to be expected in politics.”

“At a hip grocery store, Maggie meets David (Kelvin Harrison Jr., from “Waves”), a handsome singer-songwriter with a rockin’ MOR vibe, and the two have a “High Fidelity” music-geek convo that dances on the edge of cringey-ness. She doesn’t like “Hotel California” (“The Eagles are hokey, and Don Henley is a very mean man. … It’s like the ‘Brown-Eyed Girl’ of Southern California soft rock”), and he doesn’t know who Sam Cooke is—or at least he pretends not to, until she catches him crooning “You Send Me” in the grocery parking lot, at which point Sam Cooke takes over as the film’s Signifier of Musical Integrity.”

“Another type of toxic habit is rumination. This occurs when you think about something over and over again, usually because of anxiety or because you’re trying to figure out a solution to some negative circumstance. But although learning from the past can be healthy in helping us to learn from past mistakes, there’s a difference in using our previous choices as learning opportunities and wallowing in the cringey-ness of our mistakes.”

“Create an upbeat mix for your life’s soundtrack. Easier yet, tell Alexa to play songs from the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s or whatever musical genre that is your motivational call-to-arms. I created a playlist and titled it “Happy.” (Remember, we are verbing happy, so don’t roll your eyes at me.) I listened to it every day while writing this book and often broke into dance. Added bonus: the unabashed cringey-ness of it would annoy the crap out of my kids. It was the gift that kept on giving.”

“That’s what ADHD looks like in real life. What working memory and executive function challenges add up to. At times, it can feel like an absolute shit show. Constantly losing things, forgetting things, going in the wrong direction, and arriving at the wrong places. After a while, it begins to wear on you—the shame of it all; the exhaustion. The cringey-ness of having to tell someone you are running late again, or the expense of having to buy a tenth pair of headphones.”

“When about to hook up with a new guy in episode 5, rather than setting the mood, Joanna goes around her bedroom, hiding photos of her family and explaining why they shouldn’t watch: “That’s my grandpa. Get outta here, Grandpa! He survived Auschwitz… I’m quickly going to turn down my grandma, too. She also survived Auschwitz.” It’s cringey in an almost Michael Scott/The Office way; but where Steve Carrell^([sic]) asks us to love Michael despite his cringey-ness, Bayer is asking us to love Joanna Gold because of her cringey-ness.”

“To my kids, whom I trust to groan and roll their eyes at the slightest hint of cringey-ness or clichés.”

“‘He misses holding me through the night and we only get to have morning sex, but he understands that it’s important. He supports my dreams. He buys new dishwashing tablets for me to try and calls them my “new num nums”.’ I reflect on this for a moment. ‘His cringey-ness is becoming more acceptable to me.’”

“And so, just as you would build a relationship with a partner, you have to build a relationship with yourself. Practices and processes are the way to do that. It requires diligence and time and expectation and disappointment and cringey-ness—just as building a relationship with a partner does, but even more so. Much more.”

CEFR level