Our theme for the month of March is “How to.”

Prerequisite One: Find The Thing^TM

Ideally, you began this process in middle school (or earlier). Maybe you read a book series that promised magic around the mundane corners of your world, or there was a TV show or YouTuber you rushed home to watch after school, needing to stay up to date on the newest release. Maybe you heard the song of the summer and fell head over heels for that one artist or group, signing your notebooks with the last name of your future spouse, or maybe your Thing^TM was a toy brand, action figures, or dolls that you have a need to learn all The Lore^TM about.

What’s important is that you have one or two Things^TM you build your entire personality around. You’ll know a Thing^TM is a good choice when it starts affecting how you dress or when it becomes the one fact that classmates you don’t interact with much know about you. Your love for The Thing^TM may progress to the point that you begin to annoy other people around you, but that’s okay. The strongest obsessions produce the greatest feelings of cringe down the line.

Prerequisite Two: Reject The Thing^TM

Not everyone makes it to this step. Most normal people just kind of age out of the media they like and stop thinking about it, but you are not a normal person. You have strong opinions, and it’s likely something drastic has happened that has made you do a 180 on your views of your Thing^TM. Perhaps the author of your favorite series revealed their political views and you didn’t agree. Maybe the writers of your favorite TV show didn’t respect their fans. Maybe the storyline for your favorite toys took a turn you hate. What’s important is you are inspired to turn your back on what you loved, so you put the memorabilia away and forget about it for a while.

Step One: Rediscovery

Next, let a few years pass before you encounter The Thing^TM again. The most common way to re-encounter it is by packing in a move, but less common encounters include going through belongings in storage (likely in a dusty attic or basement filled with cobwebs) or hearing a stranger in public say a phrase that seems innocuous to anyone else but thrusts your mind back to The Thing^TM. In the moment of discovery, you shudder, regretting you ever liked The ThingTM. Congratulations! You’ve developed a sense of cringe! Now we can work on helping you love it again, if that’s what you’re interested in.

Step Two: Re-engage

This is the hardest step. In order to realize what you liked about The Thing^TM initially, you have to re-engage with The Thing^TM. Many people don’t take this step, and continue feeling cringe, but you are not most people. Crack open that book, find a DVD of that show, or go down a wiki-hole of that toy brand Lore^TM you loved so much. Surely there’s some nugget you can find that reminds you why you loved The Thing^TM in the first place.

Step Three: Think About Why You Feel Cringe, and If It’s Justified

It’s entirely possible you feel cringe about The Thing^TM for justified reasons. Perhaps upon re-examination the racist, transphobic, or misogynistic views of the creators of The Thing^TM made their way into The Thing^TM, which you hadn’t noticed before. In that instance, your path to loving The Thing^TM will be more difficult, as any vocalization of love for The Thing^TM may cause hurt to the marginalized communities the creators didn’t represent well in their work.¹

The other possibility is that the cringe you feel about The Thing^TM has nothing to do with The Thing^TM itself but is actually tied to how you feel about your younger self when you engaged with The Thing^TM. Building your whole identity around a Thing^TM ties your feelings about yourself to The Thing^TM.

Tweens and teenagers are annoying. This is a fact of life. No one who has ever stopped being a teenager has wished to be a teenager again. To the teen, everything happens so much and has never happened as much as they are happening in the moment. These big changes in teens’ lives make everything hard. Give your teenage self some grace. Loving The Thing^TM probably didn’t hurt anyone. There was probably even some good stuff in The Thing^TM that your now-self can enjoy too.

Congratulations, you’ve learned to love (or at least enjoy) The Thing^TM you made your whole personality but now feel cringe about in three easy steps (and two you should have done ten to fifteen years ago)!

¹ Though in the case that the creators later moved on from those opinions it’s more socially acceptable to still enjoy The Thing^TM. Look there’s a lot of nuance here that frankly this post doesn’t have the space to get into.

Sam Tuit

Sam Tuit graduated from Calvin in 2021 with a degree in film and media. He lives in Grand Rapids and works as an event coordinator. In his free time, he loves trying new things, cooking for others, and having nuanced conversations about the stories our society is telling.