Mood: Aggressively dorky and entirely unbothered.

There is a singular word I would love to ban from everywhere. It has transformed from a nice and descriptive literary word into shorthand internet speak. There is always a certain attitude that follows this word. Everyone that uses the phrase, "that's cringe," hates humans and hates authentic expression, but that hatred of authentic expression can never hold a candle to my hatred of people that use that word like a weapon.

I can hear the sneer before they even finish the word. "Cringe." It’s a hateful vocal frequency—thin, compressed, coming entirely from the back of the throat, as if the person speaking is trying to prevent any of the actual, messy world from reaching their lungs. It’s the sound of someone who has traded their pulse for a curated aesthetic, a person who thinks that the ultimate human achievement is to remain entirely unruffled by joy.

Cynicism is a slick, frictionless surface. It’s an easy way to slide through life without ever having to risk the social friction of being misunderstood. But the thing about frictionless surfaces is that you can’t actually build anything on them. You just slide.

To call something "cringe" is a tactical strike. It’s a way for the Curators of Cool—those self-appointed janitors of the capitalist ego—to tell you that your passion is too loud, too heavy, or too textured for the polite, sterilized room they want us all to live in. They want us to be "curated." They want our interests to be ironic, detached, and easily digestible. Because if you’re unironically obsessed with the granular logistics of a fictional space-faring civilization or the tactile satisfaction of a perfectly organized stamp collection, you’re hard to sell things to. You’ve found a source of heat that doesn't require their permission.

I love the earnest ones. I love the people who write eighty-thousand-word fanfictions where the characters finally just sit down and have a decent meal together. I love the people who spend their weekends in humid basements, rolling plastic dice and arguing about the specific weight of a dragon’s breath. There is a magnificent, heavy density to that kind of joy. It’s a thumb pressed firmly into the palm, a reminder that we are real, even when the world wants us to be ghosts or advertiser friendly.

They try to shame us into silence. They want us to feel the heat in our cheeks when we talk about the things we love. I know that heat. I grew up in a house where passion was a liability and being "too much" was a punishable offense.

But here is the truth: Cynicism is the weapon of the bored and the broken. It is a capitalist tool designed to keep us from connecting, because you can't form a "found family" if you're too busy mocking the person next to you for their "cringe" hobbies. Earnestness is the only thing that actually burns through the static.

When you allow yourself to be unironically happy about something "nerdy," you are performing a revolutionary act. You are declaring that your internal heat—that soul-deep vibration that makes your hands shake when you find a rare edition of a beloved book—is more important than the approval of the people who think detachment is a personality.

I am so over the cool people, the stiff, give me the high-effort hobbies. Give me the long, lyrical explanations of why a certain game music track is a masterpiece of logic. Give me the people who feel like a warm, scratchy wool blanket instead of a cold, glass screen.

Be cringe. Be loud. Be heavy. Because the alternative is to be "cool," and "cool" is just another word for dead.

---

If you enjoyed this opinion, you might enjoy, The Two Princes