Cringe is the feeling of second-hand embarassment or awkwardness you get from looking at something that just isn't right to you. Cringe culture is the labelling of a wide variety of things (movies, shitposts, anime, dogs, children) as 'cringe' in order to simply dismiss them. This is stupid.
Award shows are things like the Oscars or Grammys where they basically give fancy trophies to people who've made the best movie or show or whatever. The basic concept seems sound until you consider the fact that literally all media is subjective. No two people will share the same opinions on literally every album, game, movie, show, comic, anime, dog, cat, child, or hamster on Earth. There is no way to get the best thing in these entirely subjective fields.
Now that we've taken that brief detour into award shows, we can apply this to "cringe" as well. Again, no two people will agree on what is cringe and what is not cringe, as there is no universal definition. As with any feeling, cringe is entirely defined by the mind of the individual experiencing it. Another emotion similar to cringe is anger. Not all people get angry at the same things, but some things piss some people off more than others. Seeing old equipment get tossed in a dumpster might piss enthusiasts off, but to the boss who's getting the new equipment installed, this is merely a fact of life. We can apply this mentality to cringe. To the little hobgoblin doing TikTok dances, they aren't cringe at all. To some stranger on the internet, they definitely are.
Cringe isn't stupid, however. Cringe is just a feeling, basically completely detached from the culture surrounding it. You can cringe at almost anything and not be part of the problem, so long as you don't run around dismissively labelling everything you see and don't agree with as 'cringe'. This essay wasn't written to judge people for how they feel about things, I myself still definitely consider things, people, projects, and concepts cringe. This is more of an unhinged rambling session than a coherent structual essay, actually. I should go to bed.