I ran a “Girl Meets World” stan account during my freshman and sophomore year of high school. I had a My Little Pony phase in eighth grade after watching every episode, movie and music video with my little cousin. I have an active K-pop stan account. I prefer several “Glee” covers over the original classics, and I don’t mind Will Schuester’s raps. I am an English major who almost exclusively reads trashy romance novels, and I will admit to enjoying a Wattpad story from time to time. 

Cringe. It’s something more than second-hand embarrassment, because it isn’t quite so subjective. Cringe is ubiquitous — an ongoing, curated list of things that we stamp with a label of being embarrassing to enjoy. And as the first generation to broadcast our childhoods to the world, we’re also the first generation to contend with this stretchy new layer of shame that extends over every action. The things we genuinely enjoy turn into guilty pleasures rather than hobbies. 

Don’t get me wrong: Cringe can be useful. There’s a line between harmless enjoyment and harmful enjoyment. Sometimes we all need a good dose of shame to offer perspective on our behavior. I have no qualms about side-eyeing you for letting your love of anime convince you it’s okay to speak over Japanese people about their own culture, nor will I refrain from criticizing you for allowing your love of Fortnite to cause you to defend your favorite Fortnite creator for saying a slur. 

Furthermore, I’m not a saint. I’ll be honest: I think some things are weird. Disney adults. People who stan companies. People who stan Jimmy Fallon. I’m not suggesting we abandon our opinions of taste, because I’m certainly not willing to get rid of mine. But making fun of someone for enjoying a harmless thing sucks so much more than being curious and kind about the things others enjoy. Let your friend who only listens to J-pop have the aux cord; actually listen when your cousin opens up about the reason why he loves Sonic the Hedgehog, especially if they’re embarrassed about it. Think about how you’d want someone to treat your most cringe-inducing middle school guilty pleasure, and keep that in mind when you dig into your superiority complex to tell us all how embarrassing it is to enjoy “Steven Universe.”

What we shame each other for is also coded — usually things enjoyed by children or associated with women. Any female-presenting person who has ever had a Bieber phase, or a One Direction phase, or been a little too fond of horses knows this well. My father sustained an addiction to “Real Housewives of Atlanta” (that spanned several years) in stoney silence, and even if you asked him now, he’d never admit it. Our opinions aren’t formed in a vacuum; there’s something apart from pure differences in taste that predisposes us to mock certain hobbies over others. Maybe it’s worth considering whether your innermost biases are rearing themselves in your long-standing hatred of BTS.

This isn’t a “let people enjoy things” take. Criticize all you like. But a conversation criticizing a thing is very different from a conversation that demoralizes the person who enjoys it. It’s possible to create a space wherein people feel comfortable sharing their joys with you, even if they know you won’t get it.

As fun as edge is, it’s kind of depressing that our first response when seeing someone genuinely enjoy something is to forefront our own internalized embarrassment. Maybe you think it’s cringey that your cousin has seven different Minecraft T-shirts, but why deny her that feeling she gets when she logs in to a new world or installs a new mod? 

Kill your guilty pleasures. Or, kill the guilt you feel when you enjoy them. We should take every opportunity to be as unabashedly genuine as our latent cynicism allows us to be.