“I Am Cringe, But I Am Free”: 50 Hilarious Yet Confusing Images

According to Lynne McNeill, associate professor of folklore at Utah State University, telling stories, singing songs, or even sharing memes has the same function. “We are doing some form of symbolic communication and tapping into the authority of tradition. We may put a twist on it, but we base it on a preexisting example that came before, a process we call tradition,” she explains.

“We often consider tradition something that mires us in the past and holds us back, but really, tradition is a process of innovation. Tradition is taking precedent, reshaping it, and putting it back out there for a new use, in a new context, for a new audience,” she told Utah State Magazine.

McNeill noted that internet folklore isn’t all that new. “It is the exact same thing we have been doing with songs, stories, customs, and rituals all along throughout human history—we just have this new medium to create an expressive culture that isn’t just verbal or material or behavioral, but a combination of all of them,” she explained.

“Folklorists divide the genres of folklore into four main categories: things we say, things we make, things we do, and things we believe. Which are internet memes? Memes are verbal but they are also a form of art and an action. Even just appending a hashtag to a tweet is like giving someone a secret handshake,” the folklore expert said that memes are a “new multivalent way” for people to express themselves.

The @iamcringeok social media project was created relatively recently, in February 2022. It’ll be celebrating its second birthday in just a few short months. In that time, the Instagram account has attracted quite a solid following.

At the time of writing, 104k internet users follow the project for its quirky and bizarre content.

One of the things that helps any content creator build up a loyal following is consistency. For one, you need to be consistent in your posting frequency. On top of that, you have to try to have a consistent focus. What this means, essentially, is that even if you’re sharing and creating incredibly weird content, the tone has to be more or less the same. Otherwise, you might end up confusing your followers.

The team behind @iamcringeok has a very consistent posting schedule. They share memes pretty much every single day. That means that their followers know what to expect. But whether you post content daily, a few times a week, or fortnightly doesn’t matter much. The core thing to remember is to be consistent. Come up with a realistic schedule. And then stick to it!

Consistency in terms of content, however, can be difficult to get right depending on your chosen topic and target audience. If all you post are dad jokes, for example, things are fairly simple: you either find or write dad jokes, and then post them. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.

The same goes for cute animal memes, pics about parenting problems, and anything related to moaning about work (and how tired you are).

But if you’re focusing on nonsensical, no-context, top-tier bizarre, chaotic, and cringe-worthy pics, your work’s cut out for you. These are all pretty nebulous contexts. After all, what someone finds to be the peak of oddness might be just another run-of-the-mill meme for someone else. This means that a lot of the responsibility for the quality falls on the curator’s shoulders.

Content curators have to ensure that anything and everything they share has a consistent tone and messaging. This is as much about deciding what not to post as it is about what should be shared. If your end goal is building a strong community centered on high-quality content, you can’t be sharing every tiny little meme that you find. Nobody really likes being spammed with content. However, if they see only the top-tier stuff in their feeds on a regular basis, well, you’ve got them—hook, line, and sinker.

Which of the images featured in this list caught your eye the most, dear Pandas? Which ones amused and confused you the most? Do you think that no-context memes work better than 'traditional' ones? Share your thoughts in the comment section at the bottom of this post.