Is cringe the new cool?

Does earnest indie folk make you wince? Maybe you've got ‘better’ taste in music. Or maybe it brings back embarrassingly nostalgic memories of your op-shop, flannel-wearing, lumbersexual beard-loving, mason jar milkshake-drinking 2010s hipster era. If you're the latter, you're in luck. Because according to Kyle Chayka’s New Yorker article (and other less reputable sources), millennial cringe is back with a vengeance.

Viral clips of Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros' hit 'Home' and nostalgic TikTok montages are throwing back to a less curated, more hopeful internet “when life felt like an indie movie,” sparking both mockery and longing. But the revival of these aesthetics is about more than kitsch. It reflects a desire to revisit a moment before (western) political upheaval, pandemics, and our polycrisis-shaped cultural life.

For years, the naïve sincerity of stomp-clap-hey anthems (now ubiquitous with bad stock library music) appeared utterly corny in the context of our irony-soaked present. The twee optimism of that era seemed laughable for a while.

It’s worth noting that our industry is, in part, to blame. Indie 2010s culture, unlike its spicier 00s & 90s predecessors, was wholesome enough to be liberally co-opted and commercialised by brands and the mainstream media. Haven’t been able to listen to Ben Lee’s ‘We’re all in this together’ since that 2016 superannuation ad ruined it for you? It might just be time to embrace the corporate cringe and enjoy life – without worrying what Gen-Z are posting about you.

If some deeply repressed part of you yearns to re-watch Zooey Deschanel's ‘New Girl’, hit play on Mumford & Sons, or get a curly moustache tattoo on your finger, do it. Reclaim the uncool as a form of liberation. As someone on the internet once said,“I am cringe but I am free.”