I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: we are all cringe in our own way. The question isn’t whether we can achieve cringe salvation, it’s what our particular flavor of cringe is going to be. There are many paths that this could go down, and some are a lot more preferable than others. For example, it’s much nicer to be a ‘cheugy’ Starbucks-addled millennial stereotype than a raging incel who thinks women are evil for not sleeping with them. 

Often, we don’t consciously pick the path to our chosen cringeworthiness. It comes from a mixture of lived experience and personality. Before we know it, the cringe starts to become an integral part of us. If we are especially odious and/or unlucky, it ends up being immortalized on a list like this. Just because cringiness is inevitable doesn’t mean we get a free pass to be douchebags about it.