I dunno if you guessed it, but I like drawing cute little ponies….fanart of a children’s cartoon. And every so often, someone feels the need to tell me that my personal interest is stupid, childish, cancerous…..“cringe-y”. Boy howdy, do I hear that word tossed around a lot. Cringe, cringe, cringe. We’re all afraid of making something cringe-worthy. Something that could end up in those lovely “Bad OC” cringe compilations. I see other artists, especially young creators, getting policed and attacked for creating something that could-gasp!- be interpreted as the dreaded Mary Sue. So artists stifle themselves. Can’t make your OC too colorful. Don’t you dare make them related to a canon character! Better watch that backstory, lest somebody decry your character as an edgelord. You can have a nerdy interest, but you better not be too fucking passionate about it. Watch yourself. Don’t be too different. Don’t be cringe-y.
So here’s my question to ye gatekeepers of content, ye knowers of all things cringe-worthy, ye adamant enforcers of creative conformity………..Who cares?
Really. Why. Why is “cringe” an issue? So what if someone makes an edgy black-and-red OC, or a sparkly mary sue alicorn princess? So what if somebody makes up an over-powered self-insert and ships them with a canon character? So what if somebody dares to be unironically passionate about a fandom or interest considered less-than-cool? Who cares if people have imperfect, cliche-riddled characters they love?
Cringe culture is mean-spirited. It demands creators conform. It’s perpetuated by people who, quite oddly, get really bent out of shape at the sight of people unironically enjoying harmless things.
I say forget it. Trample it. Let people have fun. Especially don’t be cruel to young creators- nobody learns to be a skilled artist or writer overnight. And this is by no means a statement against criticism…..but there’s a big, big difference between giving constructive criticism, vs choosing to crap on somebody for having a “cringe-y” interest.
Idk. I’m a teacher with an Art Education degree, and I believe one of the most important things is to encourage people’s interest in the arts, not push them away (out of a mean-spirited attempt to seem cooler by proxy). My favorite Mister Rogers quote (applies to artists of all ages):
“Do you like to draw with crayons? I’m not very good at it. But it doesn’t matter. It’s the fun of doing it that’s important. Now, I wouldn’t have made that if I just thought about it. No matter how anybody says it is….It feels good to have made something.”
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