man makes weird face noises to deal with life’s many ups and downs

The algorithm has just told me that whimsy is “back”. Whimsy and cringe, apparently.
Oh and the cool guy is dead.
Thank god.

I don’t buy it. And whimsy didn’t disappear.

What disappeared was people’s confidence in being seen doing things they love. Calling something “cringe” has become shorthand for a way to keep your distance — from effort, from joy, and especially from looking like you mean it.

I’ve said some really cringe stuff to people I love. I meant it all, and I’m glad I did.

In January a mate I don’t speak to as often as I should sent me two voicenotes of him beatboxing. Cringe? Quite possibly. Also completely brilliant.

I sent one back of me learning this old folk song on guitar. Not finished, strings buzzing, and the timing was off. When I told him I might use his beatboxing as an example for this essay, he replied: “Call the blog: Man makes weird face noises to deal with life’s many ups and downs.”

Don’t mind if I do. In fact, that title is so accurate I can’t not use it.

Cringe isn’t beatboxing into a voice note, or playing a song badly for a friend.

What is cringe is not trying at all.

Some people use irony like a shield. But the cost of that safety is that nothing really lands. Nothing risks true intimacy or responsibility.

Just before the new year, huddled on the sofa at a truly despicable hour, someone showed me a note they’d written to themselves — about gratitude for their friends and their life.

“I wrote this note…” he said, opening his phone. I started to read. He closed it before I could finish. “Actually, no. Thats too cringe isn’t it.” He laughed that line out, you know, in that way people do when the fear of judgement kicks in. And so, the supposedly cringe moment had arrived — and died.

At some point, constant self-deprecation stops being charming and starts curdling into self-protection. And incessant self-protection becomes a self-loathing habit.

Joy goes to die in that place.

Joy can be found when you let yourself be a bit silly. Or a bit try-hard. Maybe even a bit unnecessary. The ability to commit to something slightly cringe — something creative, or earnest, or vulnerable — is central to being human.

Don’t be a wet. How about letting yourself be seen? If only to see yourself.

This isn’t about being “good”. It’s about choosing sincerity over self-protection. It’s about raising your standards and living up to them.

And yeah, life experience accumulates. But without attention, it rarely transforms us for the better. You know how some memories fade and their meanings blur? In that fog, we often rewrite them to convenience whatever narrative we’re in at the time.

I think positive repetition reshapes you. Deliberate effort reshapes you. Deciding that something truly matters — and acting accordingly — reshapes you.

Practice is self-respect in motion.

That’s all a long way of saying, if you only like cringe stuff now that it’s been socially approved, you didn’t rediscover depth. You outsourced it. You shallow fuck.

So no, whimsy isn’t back — it never left.

It’s just seems that some people have finally stopped faking detachment for taste.

At the price of looking a bit silly, that feels like a very good deal. Because the opposite of cringe isn’t cool at all.

It’s depressing.