
Man, I feel like such an old person, but I gotta admit that I don't... get the whole ''cursed image'' meme around among current teenagers. As far as I can tell, it's when someone takes one thing from a part of pop culture, and combines it with another thing from a part of pop culture, and then everyone yells about how they hope the creator suffers because this is the worst thing they've ever seen and it makes them want to die.
Now obviously I'm oversimplifying because the joke is that one or both of the references are to something considered 'cringy'. But even what is considered cringy seems to change very quickly. Things people unironically enjoyed two days ago suddenly become weird and mock-worthy.
It all feels very... tiring.
I know irony and hipsterdom has been around for a while, but I can't help but compare to when I was a teenager, in the 00s. Then, if anything, the whole point was to be ridiculously, obnoxiously sincere. We reveled in random humour - llamas were the funniest things in the world!! We squeed, we cried, we went crazy over our favourite fandoms and ships!! We were weird, god damn it, and we were proud of that, because that meant being different and interesting and true to yourself, not trying to force yourself into little boxes or do what society wanted you to do!! WE OVERUSED CAPSLOCK AND EXCLAMATION POINTS LIKE THEY WERE GOING OUT OF STYLE!!!!!!!
And again, I might be looking back with rose-coloured glasses, because I know we were ignorant to how our actions could hurt others in some pretty big ways. And I wasn't quite as unselfconscious as I'm making out - by the time I was 13 I was vividly aware of how people mocked Badfic and was desperate not to be That kind of person.
But I got to go so fucking wild, and just love things fully and whole-heartedly, and make really bad jokes and embarrasingly sincere poetry. And I just hope kids these days also get to do that? Without seeing the things they love mocked as Cringy two minutes later, seeing an edit of one of their favourite characters posted and people joking about throwing up because this is so BAD and TERRIBLE and They hope the creator is never happy again!! For forcing them to see something so inherently awful!!
...but I'm almost certainly oversimplifying when drawing this generational divide, trying to make it seem like something meaningful.
In reality, I don't like it because I'm hyperempathetic and when people speak in such excessively negative terms it. really actually has an impact on my mood. :') like sorry, I'm a sensitive baby who can't read shit like "I hope OP suffers for making this" without... kind of imagining that directed at me I guess. I certainly can't stop myself from imagining myself creating something, honestly hoping people will enjoy it, only for people to say things like that to me. Or have it turn into a symbol like that.
IDK man. I'm incredibly oversensitive to the idea that something I like (or do or whatever else) is Weird, it causes Very Loud alarm bells to ring in my brain. So current Gen Z culture is like a constant "this is probably really cringy and like a week later people will be reblogging this crying about how disgusting and awful it is :')" running through me haha;;;;;;;;