28 Cringey Screenshots That Are Almost Too Awkward To Read

It’s a good thing none of these folks are famous—some of these posts would definitely get them canceled. Yet in this day and age, posting something you regret on social media is not uncommon. After all, how many of you, Pandas, can boast that you have a perfect profile online and have never posted something cringy?

Most people have done embarrassing things online. According to a 2015 YouGov poll, 57% of Americans have posted or texted something that they later regretted. The most common regrets on social media included not thinking more before responding and sounding foolish (36%), offending a friend in the heat of the moment (15%), or doing the same but to a group of people (14%).

There’s a common saying: “I am cringe, but I am free.” Those who live by that motto are, indeed, fortunate. Nevertheless, even if people feel no shame about the embarrassing things they post online, that doesn’t mean people don’t judge them. After all, aren’t you, Pandas, here for exactly a little bit of that?

Again, you’re not alone: a 2022 Kaspersky survey showed that 40% of Americans have looked up their colleagues online and have judged them on the things they have found. This is, of course, somewhat hypocritical: who hasn’t posted something they regret? In fact, 42% of respondents in that same survey said their social media profiles don't represent who they are. Perhaps, then, the embarrassing and cringy posts don’t define us, either?

A lot of cringy interactions happen on dating apps. Women, unfortunately, are often on the receiving end of such embarrassing and unwanted messages. Even when they explicitly tell suitors they’re not interested, many still receive mean messages and sometimes even pictures. As a 2020 Pew survey showed, 60% of American women under 35 said that a person whom they rejected still tried to contact them, and 57% even received explicit photographs they did not ask or consent to receiving.

Sociologists say that when we’re online, we think we’re operating under different societal rules. We might be braver, more unrestrained, meaner, or more forthcoming because we think different rules apply on the internet. It’s called the online disinhibition effect. But we shouldn’t think the personality people present online is their entire identity, even if they feel free to be their “true self.”

As the professor of psychology at Rider University, Dr. John Suler writes that, depending on the context, there is no single “online self” for any one person. Instead, there is “a collection of slightly different constellations of affect, memory, and thought that surface in and interact with different types of online environments.”

For example, just because a man has a lot of pent-up anger in real life and expresses it online, doesn’t mean that that anger is his entire identity. Similarly, a shy woman finding a community and being “outgoing” online doesn’t negate her timid personality in real life.

Which of these pictures did you find the most embarrassing, Pandas? Have you ever posted similar blunders on social media? Share your stories with us in the comments! And if you’d like to see more fails of different kinds (ones that might give you less second-hand embarrassment, perhaps), check out our previous publications about the times translations went hilariously south and people’s hilarious failed attempts at DIY projects!

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