you were cringe. in your younger and more vulnerable years, when you were rocking the short bob with zero cares, you had no concept of cringe or shame. you were like the cringe prince of gotham, harnessing the fire of cringe bestowed from above.
you took a bite from the tree of the knowledge of cool and cringe. it is uncool to be cringe, cool kids do not commit cringe crimes. adam and eve were not sinners until they learned of the existence of the cool and the cringe. cringe was no sin until there’s cool.
why be cringe when you can be cool? free choice exists, and cool existed as an entity separate from the psyche, as it was not in anyone’s inherent nature to desire it. it is the gradual socialization around you that created the desire to be cool; eating and internalizing the forbidden fruit has altered your mind, and thus born the cool inclination.
you were cool. you still are. but there is a larger part of you that is cringe, and you can never outrun the cringe. you cringe at the thought of you being cringe to anyone, and it is just simply uncool to be this cringe.
you hereby sentence yourself to 3 years of reflection. you were banished from the garden of blissful posting; vestiges of your past remain in those “4 years ago…” archives, haunting you like the undead. you are repenting your sins of the cringe with silence, compensating your naïvety with tongue-tied guilt.
you started doing think pieces like this about two years ago, as you find alternative ways for you to express yourself. you don’t want to overshare, but it was never your intention to undershare. weeds out the superficiality, doesn’t it? you went from posting 5 times a day to posting once or twice every few months. you’re in a constant turmoil of self-awareness, self-loathe, and self-obsession; you are forever chained to the trapeze of the cringe and cool.
cool and cringe are like yin and yang. one cannot exist without the other, these rigid dichotomies should not chain anyone down. perhaps it's not that deep; the puberty mind is getting the best of me. everybody is watching, yet nobody is watching. art is what you make of it, and so is instagram. is this a celebration of life? or the church preaching fomo and social pressure? do you wish to be perceived? and which version of you do you wish to be perceived?
i’m no prometheus. i’m not here to change the status quo, i am still doing my sentence for the cringe i did 4 years ago. will i ever recover from embarrassment? if i stop caring about these external ordeals that have zero value in the eyes of God, i shall be released from this cyber prison. can you take the cringe out of the cool? did i create the garden of blissful posting, and do i even need to feel bad for being cringe?
until i find the perfect place where i could instill my passions without feeling im annoying everyone, i will speak now…
or forever hold my peace.