FULL BLEED: ‘CAUSE IF WE DON’T, WE BLOW THE WHOLE THING

I should be writing about the upcoming Kickstarter for Fake Believe. I will again this week, I’m sure. And over and over. Spent a bunch of time in my truncated last week doing outreach for the book and campaign, towards a whole bunch of websites and blogs I was assured were totally jazzed about covering new writers and upcoming projects in whatever genre and… I got a solid 5 percent return rate. Neat. For cold calls, I guess that’s not too bad. I’m not Stephen King. I’m not even Laird Barron. So yeah, lots of “who the hell does this guy think he is?” going on, I suppose.

But I’m not here to talk about that. I’m here to dig into another topic altogether. I’m here to get with cringe.

You already know what I’m talking about. Or maybe you don’t. Cringe is one of those drifting words, as with any repurposed language that’s still in flux. Particularly if there’s any controversy around its usage. Say, it’s used as cringe (derogatory). Which it started out as, at least in my encountering it. Mostly from younger to old as in “Dad, that’s so cringe.” Perhaps I tried to use current lingo. Perhaps I expressed liking a thing that wasn’t to their taste. Cringe, babies.

Now, there’s been some float. I’ve seen a much wider usage of the word, but oftentimes it’s an expression that a thing simply isn’t cool. Not just out of fashion, but that’s certainly part of the equation, but fundamentally weak or flabby or outsider and not in a good way. Of course, with any word like this, there’s a lot of power put on the speaker to define that which is bad and therefore cringe.

For instance, say, expressions of empathy get labeled as cringe from the right. Because they think themselves ascendant and tough and strong. Anything not tough and strong gets the label. Or not performatively tough and strong. Not walking the walk hup hup hup.

Then again, the figureheads on the right often get slapped with cringe as they wander around glassy-eyed and shoving and barking orders. And yeah, I think the behavior is reprehensible, betraying a weakness that they’d literally do anything to hide, whether that’s putting obnoxious bumper stickers on giant trucks or tactical wear or open carrying more guns than an FPS character or unthinking loyalty to the dudes who promise that Anti-Life will justify their actions.

I’d rather drill down a little on cringe as weakness, as being out of touch, uncool. This applies to say liking the Marvel movies, or not liking them. Language is fun! It’s relational. But cringe even gets tossed around in the expression of opinion directly, not couching things in glibness and sarcasm and other linguistic armors. I’m as guilty as anyone of this. I like to think that I try to keep it in check, but just as often as not, I don’t. Even after having done online communication as long as I have, which is a, well, a long long time. Though when it comes to the stuff that I stand in opposition to, we’ll, they’re gonna get the arsenal.

I guess what I’m bristling at is how cringe has become a shorthand for an attack on, lacking a better word, earnestness. Which is what I was trying to get at with the directness phrase above. An attack on being human instead of carefully constructed and bulletproof. Maybe I’m looking at more of a continuum that runs from cool to cringe. Cool is tough and hard and can’t be stopped. Cringe is human and fallible.

Let’s maybe look at some examples. Say Roy Baty from The film version of Blade Runner. We start out with him and he’s a brooding, glowering menace. He’s cool and hard and a badass replicant who can perform superhuman feats. We get to the end of the film and he’s not only embracing his own mortality (which he’s spent the film trying to sidestep) but revealing his humanity in that brilliant bit of improvised dialogue on the rainy rooftop. Cool to cringe. He’s cast away all that hardness and left himself open, ultimately dying to/for it.

And let’s take the example of Rust Cohle from True Detective. Cool as fuck. Handsome and detached, spouting profundities and beating information from low-lifes. He sees the big picture in a way that mere humans don’t ever allow themselves to. But all that’s an act. Doesn’t take long for that to fall away. Sure, he’s tough as hell as a cop, but ask him to come to a dinner party and he has to show up three sheets to the wind with sad-sack flowers in hand just to get through a night with his partner’s family. There’s the real Rust. There’s the beating heart.

There’s the cringe. There’s something real.

Just like every posting warrior (including me) wants to come off as Rust Cohle or John Shaft or any of a dozen Toshiro Mifune roles, impervious. And the fact is we all got beating hearts down there. This isn’t me saying that we should listen to what nazis and homophobes and transphobes have to say. Fuck that. But maybe we’d all do better to embrace some cringe. Or maybe the advice is just for me.

And there’s lots of folks out there walking that walk, not feeling like they’re operating a cool machine. Fact is, though, that it takes some bravery to walk out onto the internet like that, much less in real life. Of course, this kind of humanity isn’t me saying that you should turn the other cheek and put up with bullshit and abuse. Particularly on the net. Block, or report and block or detach quote then block. You shouldn’t have to put up with trash, or being treated as less than anyone else because of who you are. Yeah, I’m aware there’s lots of people who go out of their way to do just that. Do what you can.

But do think about the people who go hardest to project a position of strength and use that as a way to hold others down. Think about how fascism and authoritarianism and a bunch of other isms do whatever hey can to appear as not cringe. To appear as being monumental and towering and inevitable. Fascism is anti-cringe because it doesn’t allow difference, anything that steps out of the imposed forms, out of its own desired outcomes.

And once again, we return to the paradox of cringe. To adopt fascism or dogeism or whatever is cringey. Reprehensible. Anti-life. Whatever you want to call it. Which is why I might go out on a limb some and suggest that cringe is at the heart of things.

To call things cringe means that they are a failure. I’d flip that and suggest that cringe is about being human. Robots can’t be cringe (thought that white rubber abomination that got announced today sure is) because they can’t make mistakes. Metaphorically speaking that is. Reality is a whole different matter, particularly when it’s constructed by race-to-the-bottom venture capital guys who want to get past that funding round and then out.

Maybe I’m especially sensitive to this because I’ve already lived through this whole fight a generation plus ago. Back in the 90s, there was a big ironic detachment in the pursuit of cool thing, and speaking directly was frowned if not spit upon. Hell, there were whole shows about it. Maybe there still are, I dunno. But cool as armor never really went away. Maybe it won’t ever.

Which is why you gotta be on guard for it.

I know. Strong prescription, giving up cool. I doubt I’m up to it.

Kidding. I’m immensely uncool. Ask anyone.

More this week as I gear up for only the second Kickstarter I’ve ever run. And in the face of a “don’t buy anything day” protest this Friday. Not looking like a great start.