Why is joy embarrassing?

[memorizingthedigitsofpi]

Over on tumblr, I said that cringe is just being embarrassed for someone else who doesn't feel embarrassed about their own joy. But then I asked the question, "Why is joy embarrassing?"

I wasn't actually trying to be that deep. I mean, it was a legitimate question, but I wasn't planning on answering it. But now that I'm thinking about it, I actually want to know.

Why is joy embarrassing?

I think part of it is that external viewpoint. You're watching someone experience such a strong emotion, and they're doing it nakedly - without hiding it at all. We're all used to keeping a veil over that kind of thing on a day to day basis. You can only show your honest emotions on special occasions or in private.

But "cringe" behaviour is public. It's there for anyone to see. Family, friends, strangers - you're allowing all of them to watch you filled with and expressing your emotion.

When someone is crying and we feel an emotional response to their pain, we call it empathy. When someone is angry and we feel an emotional response to that anger, we call that fear. But when someone is experiencing joy, we call our emotional response cringe and recoil away from it.

I don't want to run away from joy. I want to embrace it. I want them to share it with me and pull me under the umbrella of it. Let me warm myself with your joy against the cold, dark cruelty of the world.

I don't want to snuff that flame. I want to fan it. Turn it into an inferno. The world is crap enough. Let's let the happiness in when we can.

Comments

[alias_chan]

For me it's definitely... Idk a feeling of mutual danger. Stuff I feel secondhand embarrassment about is entirely things I've been harmed for doing before, or know people will harm you for doing if I haven't gotten that unlucky myself - the more strongly I feel it, the worse I was harmed generally. So I get a combination of "I'm standing near this person, I might be attacked, too" and "wow they don't know this is dangerous, I need to protect them."

But I've been training myself over time to not be the dangerous one. Yeah there's a non-zero chance someone hurts them for being "cringey," a high chance for some things, but I refuse to be the one hurting them.

And a lot of times, the ways we try to stop people from doing things are themselves harmful - you can't protect someone from harm by locking them in a windowless room, that's not how this works. You can warn them about the danger if there's specific dangers - "hey, that queen bee might attack you if you do that in her line of sight" or "hey, this area's violently transphobic, do you want help going stealth" - but esp for social/ psychological and for vague dangers, a warning can itself cause harm, because you risk reinforcing "this is a Bad Thing to do."

But when you're having a trauma response, it can be hard to stop and sort out what this feeling is.

I think there's also a second element of "cringe," though, that I think hasn't been mentioned as much, which is when someone's being kinda just. Genuinely obnoxious. And it's not second hand embarrassment, it's "could you PLEASE not do that near me." But, again, if you have low self awareness or low ability to cope with people being obnoxious, it can be really easy to go "this person is doing something objectively wrong and I need to stop them," even subconsciously.

And annoyingness is subjective, extremely so, and also like - being annoyed is roughly harmless, and I think it's actually much better overall to develop a high tolerance for being annoyed and an ability to not lash out when annoyed, than to go "being annoyed is bad, because thing is harmless, so I shouldn't." Desensitize yourself to obnoxious people, don't put yourself in a bubble where you never encounter obnoxious people, b/c then you're more likely to lash out when you inevitably do meet someone who just grinds your gears.

(There are people who're more consistently annoying to a broader group of the population, and that also has a lot of overlap with "is Extremely Into Things" b/c "is consistently annoying" does correlate with bad social skills/ ability to tell when someone's getting annoyed and back off, which correlates with tendency to be extremely into things. Which can end up conflated in your head very easily, until you get annoyed just hearing whatever thing mentioned.)

But, like, if you're annoyed, the solution is to practice your own social skills and communicate like an adult. Don't be passive aggressive, don't escalate until person leaves - set clear boundaries at them, and agree on ways to flag shifting boundaries (or just block them if in a situation where that's feasible). And acknowledge to yourself that you finding them annoying doesn't super reflect on you - especially if they aren't even interacting with you, you're just finding the way they type when interacting with other people annoying. (This is a great use case for blocking.)

(There can also be competing access needs esp in person wrt like, if someone's very excited about a thing and is being talkative and loud, that can be extremely bad for someone who's currently extremely sensitive to loud noises, and/or who is having a mental health and needs to not be perceived or interacted with - I've definitely been followed around by people who were very excited about a thing and would not stop talking to me, and I was either in a situation where I couldn't safely tell them to fuck off, or I'd tell them to leave me alone But Politely and they wouldn't parse "politely, fuck off" as a request to stop talking (then would get extremely upset if I dropped the politeness, which makes it very hard to enforce boundaries at them), or they'd stop talking then start again thirty minutes later. And this can very easily prime me to be annoyed about the topics they were talking about.)

(Someone triggering second hand embarrassment - esp persistently - can also be itself annoying, since "anger" is a very common reaction to Bad Feels esp with trauma. And then you can be embarrassed about being annoyed, and get annoyed about that... And "make other person's behavior about you" is ime a lot easier to accidentally do when you're annoyed.)

So, uh, long ramble in summary - I think it isn't centrally that joy's embarrassing? Though that's part of it, as a wider cultural thing (especially that can trigger initial trauma wrt protective-trauma-reactions). But a lot of it is that... We're not really taught how to handle interpersonal friction very well. We're not taught how to distance ourselves from unpleasant situations without harming ourselves ("just avoid them" doesn't really work if doing that loses you your entire social group). We're not really taught how to calmly and non-harmfully bring up "hey can you not do that," or how to listen to those requests. We're not taught how to process and deal with our own trauma, or how to not lash out at others about our trauma reactions. We're not taught how to be understanding, or how to go "their behavior isn't about me," or how to forgive - we're told to, but I, for one, was never told how, and these are not intuitive skills.

And cringe really is a mixture of "this person is annoying" and "this person is giving me second hand embarrassment" ime.

[memorizingthedigitsofpi]

wow, you really hit so many nails on the head with this one. Honestly, I could just quote you back to you with all of the excellent points that really solidify my own understanding of the vague thoughts I've been trying to put into words. This. Just this. Yes, exactly.

[gothyringwald]

Butting in to say thank you for articulating this, because it's basically how I felt when I saw the post, but I just had no idea how to express it, especially wrt some people just being annoying. (Or, rather, I find some people annoying—it's not, as you said, that they're behaving in an objectively wrong way, some people will just grind your gears for whatever reason.)

The part about how it can get to the point where just the mention of the thing will annoy you is so relevant to me, right now—there are particular words that get used in one of my fandoms in ways that, for some reason, I find irritating, and now just seeing the words makes my blood simmer! (I'm trying to figure out how to desensitise myself to this because, honestly, I can't avoid these words forever haha)

Oops, I started writing this comment about an hour ago, and now I've lost my train of thought XD but, yeah, essentially I feel pretty much the same about it as you do!

[razia]

Thank you for putting into words what I couldn't. I read the post and all the responses and just couldn't articulate to myself what I was thinking.

I really feel the part about trauma, and how we end up responding to "cringe" as a means of defense. I was bullied a lot in school, especially for liking anime and manga, and especially for liking the ones that were considered "for kids" or "too girly" (god forbid I ever said out loud that I liked Sailor Moon), so I got used to keeping those things to myself, and now I catch myself cringing when I see adults talking about their interest in something like Naruto or Steven Universe or the new She-Ra.

It's exactly as you said: a mix of "if I engage in this, I'll be in danger too" and "this person is putting themselves in danger and I need to keep themselves from being hurt like I was". There's also a deep shame in being seen as childish, as someone who hasn't grown up. It took me a good decade to shake off most of it, and I still struggle with it. But I also have made a point to stop feeling guilty for enjoying what I enjoy, which has led me to be more open with friends about all my interests, even fanfiction and fanart.

And you're absolutely right that we're never taught how to deal with these situations, so unfortunately it falls to us to learn it ourselves.