So long self-consciousness, it wasn’t working out anyway. Georgie Bradley has always been cool with cringe. Read and learn.

Word on the street is, cringe is cool. It’s making the rounds in the zeitgeist. The cultural commentators (read: TikTok titans) have changed the spiel.

@dahmin454

IM FEELING A LITTLE AGGRESSIVE TONIGHT

♬ original sound – dahmin

That horrible flush of social embarrassment when you pull a faux pas is swapped for artistic license to live and let live and now the rest of us are unclenching and finally letting rip what we’ve been holding in for aeons…

@tess.barclay Normalize feeling cringe in 2023 ✨👏🏼💅🏻 #2023 #2023goals #2023resolutions #motivation #inspo #newyear #newyears #newyearsresolution #newyearsresolutions ♬ original sound – TESS BARCLAY ✨💕⚡️

I’m tickled pink by this. Because me and cringe, we’re tight. Attached by the hip. Kindred spirits. Always have been.

Cringe is kind of in my DNA structure.

My character is crowned with cringe.

Let me tell thee the ways.

Flashback

“So, you’re the class clown, then?” said my year 7 art teacher, towering over me – whose name escapes me now.

I promptly sprouted up from the floor where I had splatted after my derrière narrowly missed the edge of my art stool. And that epic fall was after I had accidentally called this unnamed man, “Dad”.

So let’s play the sequence in the right order: I arrived in class, said “yes Dad” when the teacher called my name on the register and then I splayed out like a banana peel on the floor moments later – all in under 10 seconds.

My playground cred went into the red after this. But my face didn’t. I kept calm and carried on until…

Present day

Recommended reading pace: syncopated.

Delivery guy (hands over food order): Are you normal?

Me (doesn’t take the paper bag yet): Hmmh?

DG (shakes the paper bag): Normal?

Me (Grabs the paper bag): No. Yes. No.

DG (PIVAAAATS on the spot): Sure? Me (Hangry but smiling): To be honest there is someone pounding the streets right now with a net looking to catch me – if you see them, tell them you know where I am 😁.

DG: 🙃 / 😶

Side note: what does normal even mean? That’s out. Intersectional is in. Look it up.

Other areas of business

Pregnant pauses? Unless I know someone well, I break the waters on pregnant pauses with a splash of cringe.

“So, when was the last time you had KFC?”  – don’t ask, I don’t even know.

Mind you, my brain and mouth tend to not have a consultation before the final words pinball outwards. I wish the question would be a bit more sophisticated but I’ll settle for silly – who is it hurting?

I moved to Vilnius Lithuania eight months ago. I needed a sim card. One such card here is called a Pildyk – yes you read that last bit correctly.

Me to the cashier in the local equivalent of a Carrefour: “Excuse me, HI! Do you have a Pildyk? 😎

Cashier: 😳 (Didn’t understand English. She only heard the latter part of that word, which is a universal language anyway.)

Me: To make calls?

Hundopee she thought THAT kind of call… The common denominator in all cases of cringe is my ‘meh’ mindset – that and a little pirouette out of the situation and a decidedly full wattage smile.

Over to you

Ok so what if you said bye to someone and then walked together in the same direction? So what if you accidentally liked your ex’s 2016 post on IG?

Dust off that powdered cringe and get on with it. All was still well when you ‘fell’. Trust me.

I’d say the real thing we are getting rid of in a culture now cradling cringe, is perfection. Because when you own cringe it stops being cringe. And it starts becoming confidence.