Cringeworthy

Luka you should go back and answer all my questions in the OP I was disappointed you went on hiatus and didn’t participate
 

luka

Well-known member
Luka you should go back and answer all my questions in the OP I was disappointed you went on hiatus and didn’t participate

Ok. But probably all the clever people have thought of all the clever things already.
 

luka

Well-known member
Me and my friend were making a film a few years back and part of that project was an attempt to explode the cringe so it couldn't hobble us and restrict our freedom of movement. We both felt that this sense of inhibition and embarrassment was a huge and intolerable impediment to action.

I like to think I'm quite aware of social dynamics and other people, how I appear to other people etc and that tends to inhibit, for good and for bad. So that was something we wanted to address. Not in a systematic way exactly, but consciously and deliberately.
 

luka

Well-known member
As you know I think that writing is something that pushes you up against this same wall, an encounter with the same inhibitory force. The counter force, the thing which pulls you back, that mocks, cringes, sneers, winces.

And I think victories you win at that point, alone, with the page, can be carried forward into social space where the stakes are higher
 

luka

Well-known member
What can't I express? What attitudes am I forbidden to strike? What feelings, ideas, intuitions can I not commit to paper or admit to to other people?

Sometimes it may be, actually, that you can't express and articulate those things because they're not true. It's bullshit and you're bullshiting yourself. And the cringe is a positive corrective.
 

luka

Well-known member
Because as I'm sure has been noted the cringe is a policing mechanism. Again, for good and for bad.
 

luka

Well-known member
I've never been embarrassed by dissensus. And I think a lot of what cringe is comprised of is the distance between private and public selves and that is distance I've been at pains to close over the years. So that everyone that knows me could read anything I write and their response would be, well, that's Luke obviously, he's a nutter that's just the way he is.

Doing the poetry thing out by the river has been very useful for that. I appear in public as a poet and people accept it and so on and so forth. It's not a dirty secret.
 

luka

Well-known member
Whereas if this is the only space you are allowed to be a pretentious cunt (and be understood) then obviously it's different and there's a kind of threatening space there between different self presentations
 

luka

Well-known member
Cringe as a buzzword of today is a weaponised version used to police social media as far as I can tell. You posted cringe. And often it doesn't seem to be anything especially cringeworthy. I don't spend enough time in that world to have a sophisticated handle on it. What is cringe in that sense exactly?
 

version

Well-known member
I cringe at myself a lot. It's partly why I delete posts. Sometimes I cringe at things as I'm saying them.
 

luka

Well-known member
A lot of successful comedy shows since the 90s seem to have been "cringe comedy".

True. Which probably helped implant the concept at the forefront of everybody's mind. Is that part of the reason patty thinks the office is worse than AIDS?
 

luka

Well-known member
I have a no delete policy unless I've really offended somebody and everyone is saying delete it Luka ffs
 

luka

Well-known member
I had the same ethical commitment to being potentially embaressing when I was the World's Most Famous Blogger. I felt it was very important.
 

version

Well-known member
True. Which probably helped implant the concept at the forefront of everybody's mind. Is that part of the reason patty thinks the office is worse than AIDS?

I've a feeling it ties in with dematerialisation and the relentless drive for surface and appearance over everything.
 

luka

Well-known member
When I suggested Americans prioritised the surface appearance (and that that bias is consequently taking over the world) even Padraig was willing to sort of half agree.

Hence their horror of British teeth. Do you remember when Martin Amis got his teeth fixed in America? Symbolic event.
 

luka

Well-known member
There's no inner self. There is only the business school exterior. How to act like an Alpha Male. Body language. NLP. Firm handshake.
 

luka

Well-known member
The novel is the art form of inner experience. Television is concerned with the exterior presentation. The social gaze. The camera.
 
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