the concept of Cringe is a pretty ubiquitous, but rarely defined- but if we are to define it, the definition which matches most closely to how it is used would be that it is a negative reaction to an aesthetic experience. it’s lately become fashionable to claim to be above that, but i think if you were to take the people who claim to be too woke and kindhearted to cringe at anything, and sit them down and show them, say, late era Family Guy, i think those people would quickly reveal themselves to be just as capable of cringing as every other person on earth.

now, there is a real negative phenomenon that people are talking about when they talk about “cringe culture”- namely when people vocally express aesthetic disgust outside of contexts where that is appropriate. it’s okay to openly express aesthetic repulsion toward a bad blockbuster movie you wasted money on, both because it has the social power to take the hit and has been presented in a context to be judged in that way, whereas if you openly express aesthetic repulsion toward the fashion choices of a senile elderly person, you’re an asshole. 

and obviously this is subjective- what people are aesthetically repulsed by- what makes them cringe- differs from person to person, and what an individual person feels aesthetically repulsed by changes over time, especially in response to over-exposure to something. people cringe in response to an overused joke, even if they might have found it funny the first time. people get sick of a song they once loved the millionth time they hear it used in an ad. etc.

hence why art and aesthetics evolve, and why they evolve in the patterns they do. people get sick of complex art, which sparks off a trend of simple art, people get sick of simple art, sparking off a trend of complex art, and so forth along every possible axis- harshness and softness, neatness and messiness, etc.

there’s this dumb debate that keeps cropping up between reactionaries and liberals, where the reactionaries will claim that beautiful art has been lost to the past and modernity is defined by deliberate ugliness, then they’ll use a renaissance art piece and a modern avant-garde art piece to demonstrate this claim, then the liberals will go “but ohoho, very few people consume avant garde art! and the mainstream art most people consume is very conventionally beautiful, and the only reason anyone consumes avant garde art is as a status-seeking signalling game for rich people. checkmate reactionaries :^)”

this debate drives me up the wall every time, since both participants seem completely uninterested in actually examining the social forces which drive the creation of so-called “ugly” art, and also even more glaringly neither side of the debate even briefly entertains the notion that beauty might be even a little subjective. 

the claim that avant garde art embraces “ugliness” simply as an expensive signaling game for the wealthy falls apart when it’s immediately observable that similar patterns exist outside of anything even remotely high-status- surreal fried memes, noise music,extreme metal, etc all follow similar patterns of willfully embracing “ugliness”, but don’t serve the same kind of status-signalling purpose that avant garde fine art does, so it’s clear that status signalling, while certainly in play with regard to certain types of avant garde art, isn’t the driving factor in the embrace of so-called “ugliness”. rather, it’s driven by people becoming tired of more conventional forms of memes/music and seeking something new. bringing it back to the subject of cringe, the pop music fan and the noise music fan would both mutually find each other’s taste in music cringeworthy- but notably, the while the pop music fan’s explanation of why they felt that way would likely begin and end with “it sounds like shit”, the noise music fans explanation of why they felt that way would likely involve some allusion to the ubiquity of pop music- a hint that perhaps their love for noise music is in some way a result of social context, and that if they weren’t so over-exposed to those conventional pop song cliches they might enjoy pop music more, which conversely hints that it might be possible, with sufficient over-exposure to pop music, for the pop music fan might find themselves sick of those cliches and desperate for a little merzbow to mix things up. further, if the noise fan spends enough time avoiding pop music and immersing themselves in the noise scene, they might get bored of the noise scene and desire Conventionally Appealing Chord Progressions once again, re-developing an interest in pop music. which gets back to the central point, which is that whether something is “ugly” or “beautiful” is both subjective and shaped by social context, namely “how overexposed to this thing is this person”

the prevailing aesthetic trends serve as the thesis, the people sick of those prevailing aesthetic trends serve as the pocket of dissatisfaction, which gives birth to an anti-thesis in the form of a trend that exists in opposition to that prevailing trend, then synthesis can occur in various forms, with the anti-thesis either being subsumed into the thesis or overtaking it, or any number of possibilities in between.

the thing is, for all the wailing and gnashing of teeth that reactionaries do about the supposed cultural trend toward ugliness, anti-thesises which unapologetically embrace ugliness inevitably find themselves devoured almost whole when synthesis occurs, almost all the edges sanded off for mainstream consumption. harsh noise music is never going to top the charts. you might get an alt-pop musician throwing a little noise flourish into the intro, maybe. they might name-drop some noise band in an interview. but the prevailing hegemonic aesthetic will always by definition be the one which most people find appealing on average, only able to become ugly through it’s constant repetition. far from artistic development moving too fast toward ugliness, the more significant threat is art not evolving fast enough to avoid becoming ugly through tedium precisely because it’s afraid of deviating from a narrowly defined beauty.

that said, while anti-thesises against the prevailing aesthetic status quo are necessary for art to be able to evolve, it’s clear that this doesn’t correspond neatly to political progress, and indeed, that’s one of the largest plot holes in the reactionary narrative- for all the talk of how reactionary ideology will supposedly save humanity from ugly art, it seems a mysteriously large percentage of the people making deliberately ugly art are reactionaries. the harsh noise and especially black metal scenes are fucking infested with reactionaries. and sure, there are leftists too- “red/anarchist black metal” is a thing- but with black metal especially reactionaries definitely outnumber them.

i honestly don’t know quite what to make of that- i wonder how they reconcile making art that the vast majority of people find ugly and unpleasant with their embrace of an ideology which advocates the destruction of artwork deemed insufficiently beautiful?

of course, it’s worth reiterating that ugliness is subjective, and it’s entirely possible that black metal and harsh noise nazi edgelords are fully convinced that a movement to destroy ugly art would get rid of mainstream dance pop and would hold up their lo-fi trve kvlt nsbm album as the pinnacle of art. which brings up the hilarious possibility that reactionaries are all nodding along with each other about how degenerate. “ugly” art must be eradicated, while all of them have different ideas of what “ugly” art is, and indeed are often planning to repress and destroy each other’s favorite art. and because they’re so convinced that beauty is objectively measurable, it won’t even occur to them that this might be a problem they’d run into.

that said, what is it about deliberately abrasive art that attracts reactionaries?

for one, the context can act as a smokescreen- hiding behind the pretext that they only explore reactionary politics as a neutral observer, as part of a clinical examination of the ugliness and evil of society, when in reality they’re hardline reactionaries themselves. artist charles krafft hid behind exactly this kind of ambiguity while dealing frequently with fascist subject matter, only to be later revealed as a fascist and a holocaust denier.

also, for someone to be recruited into a reactionary ideology it’s often a prerequisite that they be in some way unhappy with the current prevailing status quo- they can’t desire a return to a romanticized past unless they view the present negatively. there’s obviously a parallel here between how reactionaries engage with avant garde art- both condemning it and engaging with it- and how they position themselves in relation to content viewed as “cringe”- fascists are both frequently the ones making cringe compilations and the ones being placed in those compilations. perhaps there is a sense that by becoming the arbiter of what is and isn’t considered cringe, they can escape being on the wrong end of that construct, and reactionary ideologies present them the opportunity to place themselves in the role of being the one who determines what is cringe, even if the reactionary narrative is obviously at odds with their actual goals here, since the neonazi guro mlp hentai noise music fan will go on constant rants about how pop music and normies are Fucking Cringe and will be eliminated when society Rejects Modernity and Embraces Tradition, but said brony nazi noise music fan would obviously not be served by a scenario in which society actually did Embrace Tradition and return to the Medieval European Ways, because traditionally, in medieval europe, they didn’t make any harsh noise music or my little pony guro porn.

so a major factor is simply that the people in question are out of sync with the prevailing hegemonic aesthetic, and have convinced themselves that a fascist dictatorship would put the world in sync with their own sense of aesthetics by returning to an idealized past, without considering that since there isn’t any past period where their sense of aesthetics was the norm, that any return to the past would only put the world further out of sync with their own aesthetics.

furthermore, exploration of ugliness as an aesthetic, as previously mentioned, is largely something explored by people who have consumed enough conventionally beautiful art to become sick of it, and most people who have the kind of funds to drop on consuming art to that degree are usually people who are fairly well off. now, as previously stated different people have different tastes, and different thresholds for when they’ll get sick of more conventionally pleasing stimuli and go on to seek more extreme or unusual stimuli, and for some people that threshold is very low, so yes, someone of any class background can develop a love for noise music. but there’s a reason so many noise musicians are also record collecting trust fund hipsters, and why similar aesthetically gluttonous bourgeoisie seem to be the primary content creators across ostensibly counter-cultural aesthetic communities, from underground music to avant garde art to fringe fetish porn on deviantart.

this helps to explain both why there’s a presence of reactionaries in edgy loud music scenes and avant-garde art, as well as why ostensibly leftist/revolutionary avant garde music and art is often so lacking in real revolutionary character. most of the people dedicating substantial portions of their time making music which by it’s very nature most people don’t like and will never become popular are bored rich kids seeking underground clout and operating at a financial loss to do so. or, in the case of fringe fetish art, instead of it being a small group of wealthy people creating the art at a loss, instead a small clique of wealthy people are the ones commissioning the art rather than the ones making it.

either way though, it’s a clear demonstration that far from art which is aesthetically counter-hegemonic being intrinsically also politically counter-hegemonic, in reality the ruling class has a near stranglehold on both hegemonic and counter-hegemonic art, thus allowing the capitalist ruling class to have near total control of the dialectic of art, controlling both the present and the future of aesthetics. it’s tempting to think then that by fighting for control over counter-hegemonic art scenes, the left can seize control of the aesthetic dialectic away from the ruling class- but without addressing the base first, by only addressing the superstructure, all this does is create exciting new examples of wealthy people pretending to be working class and/or woke for clout. not that pretending to be working class is exclusive to leftist underground musicians- a lot of skinhead nazi punk bands secretly had a wealthy background, see Nick Solares of Youth Defense League, who was of a bourgeoisie background but lied extensively about being working class. today he works as a food reviewer focusing especially on the fancier and more unusual cuisine, supporting my thesis that interest in extreme aesthetics is often driven by having the resources to become bored of more conventional stimuli. far from being at odds with one another, his career as a far-right hardcore singer and his career as a snobby fine dining food critic are of a piece with one another, both symptoms of his bourgeoisie background allowing him the privilege of becoming bored with more  accessible sensory experiences.

at any rate, faux-proletarian bourgeoisie right-wingers being supplanted in the punks scene by faux-proletarian bourgeoisie left-wingers does little, if anything, to create a genuinely proletarian culture. to do that, it is necessary to address the base first before the superstructure, to create networks of mutual aid and dual power to support the working class first, then let aesthetic movements spring up out of that, rather than hoping that underground music scenes which wealthy people exert undue influence over will somehow generate genuinely revolutionary movements if the lyrics are woke enough. none of those lyrics will matter when the singer ends up growing up to be a landlord anyways.

of course, i’ve already gone on probably too many rants about how underground music scenes aren’t going to spark off the revolution, so there’s no need to go any deeper into that subject. so lets move on to more interesting topics.

when it comes to the way the evolution of aesthetics and the dialectics of cringe are shaped by material conditions, it’s worth once again noting the significance that advertising holds in driving this. it’s a truism that a meme is dead the moment it’s used by a corporate account in an advertisement, at that exact instant, the meme becomes cringe.

it’s connection to the horrible system of commerce that enslaves us all is part of what drives this cringe response toward advertisement and all it touches, yes, but more importantly it’s involuntary nature is a major part of that as well- we become repulsed by memes/music/art we encounter in advertising because advertising is forced upon us, making the process of getting sick of it, and finding it cringe, occur much faster.

but even in a non-capitalist society, this factor can still be an issue, and indeed, this was an issue for the soviet union- the phrase “communism is kitsch” being a joking reference specifically with the repetitiveness of the Socialist Realist aesthetic, and it’s unavoidable omnipresence in agit-prop. the problem of beauty becoming cringe through over-exposure is not strictly caused by capitalism, nor strictly an affliction of the bourgeoisie (an assumption that indeed was the impetus behind the promotion of the socialist realist aesthetic) and inevitably boredom with the socialist realist aesthetic soon ensued, and abstraction and surrealism made a comeback soon after.

 the general pattern seen in the soviet union would likely be seen in any revolutionary movement- it would begin by associated with aesthetically counter-hegemonic aesthetics, see the connection between the russian constructivist aesthetic and the russian revolution, then an embrace conventionally “beautiful” aesthetics occurs as the revolutionary movement becomes the new hegenomy, then a new avant garde emerges in response to this when that becomes boring, and from there ensues a more even back and forth between the artistic mainstream and underground. the attempt to promote Socialist Realism as a official art style was misguided not because there’s anything wrong with realism or beauty, but rather because it attempted to freeze the dialectic between conventional “beauty” and experimental “ugliness”, and in doing so caused a period of stagnation and repetition during the Socialist Realist era. the problem isn’t that there was a trend toward realism in art- that’s to be expected in the wake of a successful revolution- the problem is by enshrining that art style as the official art style, it made it harder to move past that stage when it was time to.

however despite the narrative presented by anti-communists, after the Socialist Realist style fell out of favor, the dialectic between the aesthetic mainstream and underground functioned pretty well, with soviet art, including in the mainstream, having a healthy sense of experimentation and creativity, easily out-doing the american hegemonic culture- see this soviet animated short from 1979:

which has a free-jazz soundtrack and stylized art style which manages to be both more experimental and more pleasing than what was going on in american animation at the time:

and even during the Socialist Realist era, aspects of abstraction and impressionism did still exist even if it wasn’t the prevailing norm, see the work of Anatoli Kaplan [link] (mind you, that doesn’t change my earlier point that the promotion of Socialist Realism was a misstep that delayed the formation of a healthy aesthetic dialectic)

those who attempted to promote socialist realism as the official art style did have a point that a responsibility of art is to serve the people, but in order for art to serve the people, it must be able to evolve- when the meme becomes overused and cringe, when the socialist realist aesthetic becomes kitsch, it must have a direction to evolve in, an antithesis to synthesize with, and for that to occur it is important for their to be art which was created purely for the purpose of pioneering new ideas rather than being directly aesthetically pleasing to the general populace- this art serves the people not directly, but through influencing other, more accessible art. the watered-down accessible imitation of experimental art isn’t a corruption of it, as much as the purists may convince themselves of this, but rather is the very thing that gives the avant-garde a reason to exist.

one curious side-effect of the reality that aesthetic stimuli formerly found pleasing can become unpleasing through over-use, thus inspiring the exploration of formerly unpleasing aesthetics for the sake of novelty, is that then, in turn, these formerly pleasing aesthetics rendered unpleasing through over-use can  themselves later be explored in the context of experimental exploration of unpleasing aesthetic stimuli, of “ugliness”- vaporwave being a well-known example. smooth jazz and new-age music was engineered to be aesthetically pleasing and nonthreatening, then due to this it becomes over-used as on-hold music or in commercials, and other instances where we are exposed to it unwillingly, thus becomes unpleasing, and then vaporwave samples it as an avant-garde statement. however, it’s only once it fell out of favor as on-hold music and commercial music that it was able to become ripe for this kind of revival- there’s a pattern to these cycles. similarly, the Sots art movement in the USSR referenced the aesthetic of Socialist Realism with a sense of ironic kitsch- the Sots art movement could only possibly have emerged after the Socialist Realist aesthetic had fallen out of favor, and would have been incoherent if it was contemporaneous with it, much as vaporwave would have been incoherent if someone had tried to make it in the 80′s.

both Sots art and vaporwave attempted to use the theme of exploring conventionally pleasing imagery which had at one point been rendered unpleasing through overuse as a way to explore the economic and political systems in play which caused it to be over-used in the first place- soviet socialism and capitalism, respectively. these same aesthetics can- and have- been explored without focusing on that aspect of their history, for example synthwave deals with much of the same aesthetics as vaporwave but in a more straightforwardly nostalgic and celebratory way, without acknowledging or addressing the way that in the past, overuse of that aesthetic had at one point rendered it cringe-inducing.

as a result of being driven by the profit margins of the ruling class rather than serving the people, capitalism often manages to be the worst of both worlds in terms of the dialectics of aesthetics- aesthetics doesn’t change substantially enough to actually keep people who are tired of the status quo engaged, but also punishes people for not being bored of the old aesthetic in order to force them to spend money on the new aesthetic. the New Trend will be so similar to the Old Trend that if you hated the Old Trend you’ll probably still hate the New Trend, but also, if you did like the Old Trend, you’ll be socially punished for it and Added To The Cringe Compilation to get you to spend money on the New Trend. this pattern is especially noticeable in fashion, which stays broadly the same for decades on end (people still be wearing t-shirts), but manages to punish people enough over mild variations in hemming and fit to keep people wastefully throwing out old clothes and buying new clothes, only for the discarded clothes to come back in fashion after they’ve been thrown out, of course.

however as previously stated even without there being a profit motive for an older aesthetic to be seen as unfashionable, this phenomenon still occurs- outdated memes will still elicit groans and cringes even though Meme Incorporated isn’t trying to get your to throw out your old memes to buy the new fall line or whatever. not that profit motive doesn’t play a role in the process- as previously mentioned, use in advertisements almost instantly renders a meme dead and cringe- but here the intention of the profiteer is against the meme becoming unfashionable/cringe. the person who put that rageface in their advertisement doesn’t want you to have a visceral negative reaction to that meme because of how tired you are of seeing it, especially in advertisements- what they want is for you to think that’s the dopest thing ever and buy their product.

the dialectic processes which render formerly beloved aesthetics cringe-inducing is affected by profit motive in numerous often negative ways, but removal of the profit motive alone doesn’t immediately solve all issues, and it’s still necessary to foster the development of an artistic mainstream, an artistic underground, and a dialectic between them, which is dynamic enough to not become stagnant and boring, while also not administering unnecessary social disincentive toward people who engage with no longer fashionable aesthetics- with the socialist realist era demonstrating how both these problems can occur even in the absence of profit motive.

i don’t really know how to end this so here’s the annoying orange cover of gangnam style:

i invite you to watch it, and while you watch it, please meditate on the dialectics of cringe, and then look at the upvotes (349,000) and reflect on the subjective nature of beauty. thank you.