Climbing Cringe Mountain
Why it took me seven months to make this post, and some thoughts on Barbie
I saw a TikTok a couple of months back that changed my view of the world. I would say that’s a sentence I never thought I’d write, but for the last three years now I’ve been having TikTok-related epiphanies quite often, so you know.
The video was about ‘Cringe Mountain’ and why you have to climb it to get to the land of cool. Video here.
I have never successfully reached the summit of Cringe Mountain. I’ve been cringe forever, and I’ve always quickly ducked out on things I was interested in before it got serious, or cool: the three fashion blogs I started and abandoned from 2012 onwards, a YouTube account to talk about books, poetry…and fair enough, these things probably wouldn’t have made me cool, but I could’ve tried!
Maybe it’s a symptom of growing up alongside social media. I was on Facebook at 10-years-old, saw YouTubers become famous and rich from AdSense, Instagram launch, TikTok go from a weird app on my kid brother’s phone to what it is now. There are obviously a load more examples than these, but the point stands: I watched other people do it, wanted to do it, and didn’t. Coulda, woulda, shoulda. Live, laugh, love.
What I’m trying to say is that I signed up to Substack in January, and I’m only just posting now because I put so much pressure on myself to make it great from the get-go. By all standards, this isn’t a great post. But here I am, declaring that I'm going to get started on Cringe Mountain and try to make it over the peak.
In other news, I saw Barbie on Friday and missed the memo on wearing pink. It made me feel very sad (the film, not my boring outfit), and I’m not sure it was meant to, but I also laughed a lot. My boyfriend said if Barbie made me sad I probably shouldn’t see Oppenheimer. Overall, it was a bit too didactic, America Ferrera should’ve had more screen time, and the inclusion of Mattel and its fictional, bumbling CEO felt more like the film was laughing at consumers more than it was mocking the business. But still, it was good fun! And should be just that, to be honest — it didn’t feel particularly deep and I’m not sure if it was meant to.