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If there’s one thing the internet has taught us, it must be our enduring appreciation of a good cringe. Urban Dictionary defines the term cringe as “when someone acts/is so embarrassing or awkward, it makes you feel extremely ashamed and/or embarrassed.” But the feeling is way better felt than explained in words.

If you’re already a self-confessed cringe addict who dove down the cringetopia hole and experienced the most cringeworthy moments of life, then we've got this new treat for you. Welcome to The Cringiest Posts Twitter page that does exactly what it says in the title – shares the posts that make you curl up like a tortoise out of the sheer cringe and then cringe once more.

Below we wrapped up some of the funniest, I mean cringiest examples, so enjoy with caution!

If you've ever spent enough time browsing in the land of the internet, you must have inevitably encountered cringe-powered content at some point. It takes only one word, five letters, to be exact, to present the inexplicable feeling known as cringe. For some, it’s a curled upper lip, for others it’s a shake of the head, for the rest, it's curling into a ball that forgets any social norms.

According to Kaitlyn Tiffany, the term cringe took off on forums in the early aughts, when the practice of humiliating oneself online was still somewhat novel. Now, however, it’s absolute mainstream — it’s both an internet genre and a meme, as well as an insult of some kind. It's natural to wonder if we all suddenly became more prone to cringe as a group, or if there’s another reason why there’s so much cringeworthy content out there.

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Fembot
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

With all my training I can easily picture the ‘novelist’ biting their fist after that reply

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Well, in a piece for The Atlantic, Tiffany argues that “it’s because we’ve been given more opportunities to display our cringeworthy characteristics, and also to point out the cringeworthy behavior of others.” She adds that “Whereas people used to feel secondhand embarrassment on behalf of their friends and family, or wince at their own awkward behavior, they are now exposed to the potentially embarrassing behavior of entire social networks.”

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Headless Roach
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Oh that's easy. You'll only need a crystal ball, a shroom picked at midnight and 3 roach heads

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As if that wasn’t enough, we have spent years, a decade, if not more, in this kind of environment. No wonder our sense of cringe has become heightened to the point where “we can sniff out the tiniest flaws in someone else’s public performance, dig them up, share them around.” Tiffany calls us “the connoisseurs of cringe,” and you may wonder if that’s even a thing to be proud of.

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Meanwhile, according to evolutionary history, cringe is birthed by the fear of social rejection — a feeling similar in intensity to physical pain. Psychology professor Rowland Miller argues that people literally crinkle in embarrassment because the ability to “feel vicarious embarrassment is influenced by our ability to empathize with others.”

Miller argues that people cringe for reasons beyond contempt; it can be compassion, too, for having experienced a feeling similar to that unfolding in real time. Cringe is then about secondhand shame and empathy — human emotions that define anything and everything we do.

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Fembot
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

What an asshat. Anyone looks like s**t photographed like that. He’s trying to get lifelong attention from bringing his wife down. And succeeding apparently

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Melissa Dahl, a senior editor at The Cut and author of Cringeworthy: A Theory of Awkwardness, suggests that cringe content is “a controlled way of facing this really deep fear.” She argues that “It’s funny to talk about being embarrassed during the year 2020 when there’s such scary things going on,” referring to the height of the pandemic. Cringe content, on the other hand, shows that there’s nothing scarier than being cast out on your own and laughed out of the group.

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Ponypower
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I thought the NFT was a digital code attached or with in the picture. You own a line of 1's and 0's not the picture, which means the artist that made the picture doesn't get paid, because you never bought the 'picture'. Anyways nfts booooo!

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Remi (He/Him)
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Blb vlk pln žbrnd zdrhl hrd z mlh Brd skrz vrch Smrk v čtvrť srn Krč. Czech: "Vowels are for weaklings"

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butt soup
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1 year ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

all the people in the comments posting words with the letter Y in them are making me cry. yes, Y is *sometimes* a vowel, but Y is *always* a vowel if there are no other vowels in the word. look it up, it's true. it's painfully obvious some of you didn't finish elementary school. go back to first grade & learn your vowels & consonants.

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somuchshivering
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Y is considered a vowel only in multiple other languages though and it's generally a vowel even though it can sound like a consonant in English and some others, but then again, multiple other languages Y never sounds like w or j, it has it's own vowel sound but no consonant sound _at all_ in some languages. I speak mainly languages where Y is nothing but a vowel so it's not universal, only exception is English in the ones I know.

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Christof Irran
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

From the Onion, 1996: "Before an emergency joint session of Congress yesterday, President Clinton announced US plans to deploy over 75,000 vowels to the war-torn region of Bosnia. The deployment, the largest of its kind in American history, will provide the region with the critically needed letters A,E,I,O and U, and is hoped to render countless Bosnian names more pronounceable."

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William Handlon
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I think Biden printed more money so the US could go on wheel of fortune and buy vowels to send to foreign countries

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KM
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1 year ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Why do so many mention words with "y" in them? What is this insanity? On a more serious note, interjections would be the way to go, like "hmm" due to the specifics of sonorant sounds

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Stannous Flouride
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

There are a few legal Scrabble words that apply: ST, SH, GRR, PSST, CH, HM, HMM, MM, BRR, NTH, ZZZ, CWM, PFFT, TSK or TSKTSK, & GRRRLS

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Whitney Anderson
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

i know Y is sometimes considered a vowel but if you dont consider it a vowel then there are lots of words. Why, hmm, hymn myths, thy, dry, cyst

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Michelle Cherry
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1 year ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

TV is literally the only English word I know without any vowels. It's an abbreviation, but I think it has its own place in the dictionary.

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Tommy Brown
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

there is a word with no vowels: cry (unless y is being used as a vowel IDK if it is)

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SGH
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1 year ago

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Dacă nu pierdeam, câștigam
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Interjections: prr, mhm, mrr etc. Also, the consonants by themselves (one H, two Hs).

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Khara Mei
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Has seven vowels, "vowelless" words like Ysbyty Ystwyth actually have a few.

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PixxelDust
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1 year ago

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Shaquille.Oatmeal
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1 year ago

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Kiss Army
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1 year ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

My son's middle name is Rhys. My husband liked the traditional Welsh spelling because it doesn't have any "traditional" vowels in it...

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B.Nelson
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

There is a road in southern California named Zzyzx. You can decide if its vowel free or not. Technically "hmm" is a word (although a weird sound based word).

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DC
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

... and yet, so far ... I might as well be on Mars...

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the Return of Bruno
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Rhythm. Some will say that the "y" is a vowel, but is it really a vowel if you can skip it, and still pronounce the word the same way? It's not at all like the "y" in words like "cry" or "misty."

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Khara Mei
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

First is Welsh where W is a vowel, rest are examples of Y being grammatically a vowel.

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Catherine Graffham
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1 year ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Syzygy: a pair of connected or corresponding things/a conjunction or opposition especially to do with the sun and the moon e.g. ‘The planets are aligned in syzygy’ (learned that one from a video game)

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SheamusFanFrom1987
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1 year ago

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Spy, Shy, Dry, Cry and almost anything and everything with "Y" in them?

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Ozacoter
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

As far as I know? Homo antecessor with about 1.2my but probably there are older undiscovered remains

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