STUDENT VOICES | THE 2025 CHYNN ETHICS PAPERT THIRD PRIZE BEST ESSAY WINNER

How Online Cringe Culture Codifies Conformity as Desirable

By Theresa Gormley – Fordham College, Rose Hill 2026

I,Like many of my Gen-Z peers, I found myself drawn by the magnetic pull of the internet during a time that was significant in the development of two distinct entities: myself as an individual, and social media as a mélange of colorfully filtered photos coupled with quirky, emoji-dominated captions. My internet consumption habits began as fairly innocuous; pre-teen me was especially enamored with the “slice of life” style videos produced by girls only a few years older than myself, offering everything from makeup tutorials to middle school survival hacks. But as I entered adolescence and eventually young adulthood, the types of content being produced and the platforms from which they emerged continued to evolve at a frighteningly rapid pace. Anybody who consistently perused the internet from the early-mid 2010s to the present day can discern the tangible shift within the black hole that is modern social media–both for the casual browser and dedicated influencer alike. The widespread adoption of devices such as smartphones and tablets has certainly made the experience of content creation more accessible to the average individual; but as with all things that seem too good to be true, such increased accessibility is not without its ramifications.

Although I was fortunate enough to enjoy the better part of my childhood without the influence of a shiny, hypnotic screen, younger generations are subject to the unique experience of having the majority, if not all of their lives digitally immortalized through the lens of an iPhone camera. The unbridled ability to capture an isolated moment or event at ease, combined with the exponentially increasing popularity of social media platforms recognized for their capacity to produce viral content overnight, generates the perfect conditions for encouraging bullying and harassment–especially towards populations who are susceptible to being “othered”; that is, experiencing discrimination and maltreatment on the basis of one’s perceived departure from the dominant culture’s expectations (Cherry, 2026). Racial minorities, members of the LGBTQ+ community, people with disabilities, neurodivergent individuals, or others who deviate from the stringent social norms and trends promoted by the rapidly evolving algorithms of platforms like TikTok and Instagram are particularly vulnerable to being othered, and the risk of being victimized by the untamable beast known as cringe culture directly drives the need to uphold these norms; conformity becomes synonymous with social viability.

Human beings are unequivocally social creatures, and the essence of this nature stipulates that some behaviors be classified as acceptable, and others as not. These delineations are arguably necessary in defining and maintaining a healthy, morally sound society. Emotions such as embarrassment and shame, produced in response to observing or participating in behaviors that transgress the parameters of socially acceptable conduct, often serve as a measure of understanding when a moral boundary has been breached (Mayer et al., 2021). But what happens when objective moral standards become conflated with the preservation of unobtainable aesthetics and arbitrary ideals? “Cringe”, in the contemporary use of the word, is commonly understood to describe a person or behavior that transgresses a social rule or norm (Feiler and Hutmacher, 2024). Individuals have been known to deliberately adopt behaviors that may be interpreted as cringe for the purpose of irony or humor, but the quality of being cringe is often ascribed to persons without their knowledge or intention of being perceived as such (Mayer et al., 2021). Cringe culture relies heavily on principles of public shaming and humiliation. At one time, it may have served as a conduit for chastising those who were groundlessly rude, discourteous, or otherwise hostile towards others, but has since undergone a concerning transformation–one characterized by the contempt for those who do not align with the white, heterosexual, wealthy, and able-bodied standards that are valued in modern society (Harvey, 2021). Cringe culture denigrates diversity and praises uniformity. Furthermore, social media simultaneously demarcates the idea of who and what is deemed as cringe and enforces these social rules through the unlimited access that the general public has to visual content produced of themselves and others, whether consensually or nonconsensually.

The profound effects of this are especially devastating to those who are navigating their formative years. Adolescence, a period of life that is crucial to the discovery of one’s identity, is now excessively monitored through the camera lenses of classmates, friends, family members, and potentially even strangers. This constant surveillance implicitly demands conformity and punishes unconventionality by inviting thousands of online viewers to observe the social blunders of awkward teens from the safety of their anonymous social media profiles. The natural courses of experimentation and exploration that often characterize one’s teenage years are overshadowed by the need to circumvent the horrifying prospect of being perceived as cringey. Most ethical models and analyses acknowledge the existence of “vulnerable populations”, or groups who, by nature of some immutable characteristic, require special consideration and protection against manipulation and exploitation (Luna, 2019). Minors are considered a vulnerable population, but the characteristic of vulnerability is understood to be intersectional based on a variety of contextual factors that include, but are not limited to socio-economic status, access to resources, and/or if one’s autonomy and agency is otherwise inhibited in some way (Luna, 2019). As such, it is certainly reasonable to apply these standards to social media usage; underage people who are considered vulnerable by the criteria elucidated above should not be filmed and uploaded to the internet without their consent because it allows them to become potential targets of online harassment. The prospect of having one’s entire existence reduced to a video clip as short as 10 seconds long is both terrifying and highly unethical, and lax social media moderation combined with the ability to easily download and repost content makes erasing the evidence of one’s “cringey” actions an essentially impossible feat.

Cringe culture expects an unattainable degree of perfection and grace that is falsely branded as innate, and feels justified in penalizing those who fall short by commodifying their failures and packaging them neatly within a brief, easily digested video clip. Furthermore, the screen that separates the observer from the cringey subject of interest provides moral vindication for engaging with such content. Comment sections flooded with the same dozen regurgitated insults and gifs act as reassurance that there are no ethical stakes to our consumption if hundreds of thousands of others are in agreement that being cringe is a crime deserving of social exile. The desire to fit in seamlessly with the ideals purported by social media in conjunction with the ability to quickly film and upload those who transgress social norms and expectations also gives rise to a society that limits self-expression and rejects authenticity, and one may easily evade the potential threat of being labeled as cringe by repressing originality. During an interview with ABC News, writer Ocean Vuong described his experience as an educator at New York University, making note of his students’ negative attitudes towards their own writing and reluctance to put any meaningful effort into their work for fear that sincerity would be viewed as shameful or embarrassing (Martinez, 2025). Vuong attributes this to the increased access that we have to other people’s work and lives through social media in combination with the belief that dispassion is a substitute for intellect (Martinez, 2025). Similarly, in an article published by The New York Times, students enrolled in high schools across the country were interviewed about their fear of being regarded as cringe, and their responses were overwhelmingly characterized by concerns about online surveillance and facing scrutiny by both the internet and their peers (The Learning Network, 2025). Teenagers described developing deep insecurities in response to cringe culture, and the majority admitted that anxieties surrounding how they are perceived significantly inhibited their ability to be vocal about their hobbies, and the belief that they had to diminish certain aspects of their personalities was prevalent amongst almost all of the responses (The Learning Network, 2025).

It is evident that cringe culture has transcended online spaces and has permeated our daily lives and practices, dictating our attitude towards ourselves and others. Even though I am far removed from my tumultuous teenage years, I am continuously trying to unlearn the fears I have concerning others’ perceptions of me as well as the instinct to judge rather than to receive differences with an open mind. Convictions such as modern cringe culture that enforce homogenous ideals and operate on encouraging conformity and assimilation also have broader and more dangerous implications, especially at a time when xenophobic and anti-immigrant sentiments have pervaded in full force in countries like the United States (Rincon, 2021) and the United Kingdom (Bello, 2025). Social media has the potential to foster creativity and exist as a space where artistic risk and experimental self-expression is celebrated. However, the existence of cringe culture persists in curtailing this; if we as a society remain steadfast in our obdurate view of divergence from social norms as a moral failing worthy of public disgrace, then we will continue to regard conformity as a paradigm for social success.

For more information about the prize, past winners, and submission requirements for 2027, please visit the Chynn Ethics Paper Prize webpage. The deadline to submit is TBD and is open to ALL undergraduates.

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Instagram
• WordPress

---

---

References

Bello, Natalie. “The Rise in Racial Tension and Growing Anti-immigration Sentiment in the
United Kingdom.” Human Rights Research Center, 26 Nov. 2025,
https://www.humanrightsresearch.org/post/the-rise-in-racial-tension-and-growing-anti-immigrati
on-sentiment-in-the-united-kingdom

Cherry, Kendra. “Othering: How It Contributes to Discrimination and Predjudice.” verywell
mind, 30 January 2026, https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-othering-5084425

Feiler, Thomas and Hutmacher, Fabian. “That’s cringe! – Wait a minute. What is cringe?” The
Inquisitive Mind, 2024,
https://www.in-mind.org/article/thats-cringe-wait-a-minute-what-is-cringe

Florencia, Luna. “Identifying and evaluating layers of vulnerability – a way forward.”
Developing World Bioethics, vol. 19, no. 2, 2019, pp. 86-95,
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/dewb.12206

Harvey, Beatrice. “The Ethics of Cringe.” The Prindle Institute for Ethics, 5 Feb. 2021,
https://www.prindleinstitute.org/2021/02/the-ethics-of-cringe/

The Learning Network. “What Teenagers Are Saying About Being ‘Cringe’.” The New York
Times, 30 October 2025,
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/30/learning/what-teenagers-are-saying-about-being-cringe.ht
ml

Martinez, Angel. “Ocean Vuong is right. Cringe culture is killing our creativity.” PhilSTAR Life,
25 Jul. 2025,
https://philstarlife.com/news-and-views/886986-cringe-culture-killing-our-creativity?page=5

Mayer, Annalina Valpuri, Paulus, Frieder Michel, and Krach, Sören. “A Psychological
Perspective on Vicarious Embarrassment and Shame in the Context of Cringe Humor.”
Humanities, vol. 10, no. 4, 2021, pp. 1-15, https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0787/10/4/110

Rincon, Selena. “The Anti-Immigrant Movement in the United States.” The Pardee Atlas
Journal of Global Affairs, 2021,
https://sites.bu.edu/pardeeatlas/research-and-policy/back2school/the-anti-immigrant-movement-i
n-the-united-states/