Everything You Want Is On The Other Side Of Cringe - Zack Telander - #998

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
Zack Telander, welcome to the show.

**Zack Telander** (0:01)
It's been a while since I have been on this show.

**Chris Williamson** (0:12)
You've been busy.

**Zack Telander** (0:14)
I have been busy, dude. I've been very busy. I just want to say also that this is a perfect representation of you and I, like the autism architects, and then like the degenerate kind of cowboy, Waylon Jennings right here, outlaw.

**Chris Williamson** (0:30)
I'm trying to subliminally change people's music choices through what I wear as a t-shirt. I don't think it's working. I don't think anybody is listening to any of the bands.

**Zack Telander** (0:41)
I feel like they are. I don't know. Yeah, but I'm not going to give you, I'm not going to allow you to be the only person that wears a band t-shirt in here.

**Chris Williamson** (0:47)
That's true.

**Zack Telander** (0:47)
I bought this purposefully for this episode.

**Chris Williamson** (0:50)
Oh, nice.

**Zack Telander** (0:50)
Yes, I do love Waylon Jennings.

**Chris Williamson** (0:53)
Sick. Everything you want is on the other side of cringe.

**Zack Telander** (0:57)
Yeah. So I saw, actually, I made this post about cringe. And a lot of times people say, if you want to defeat cringe, you just have to, it's like a muscle you have to flex. You just have to keep going for whatever it is and learn how to take failure. And it's almost as if failure and cringe are aligned.
But my nuanced take from it was, the people who are calling you cringe, or like the critics, like everyone has hopes and dreams. Everyone. You know, it's not like there are some people who are born and they're just like, I don't want to do anything with my life ever. Right? But the critics and the people calling you cringe, essentially what they're doing is saying like, oh, you're pursuant of some sort of hope and dream. How dare you? And so at some point in their lives, they had to make a decision. I'm not going to pursue my hopes and dreams because that is quote unquote cringe, which I found super interesting. And so in this video, I just, all I said was like, you know, the only times that the critics or the people calling you cringe can access their hopes and dreams is when they're sleeping. So then when they wake up, just make sure they keep watching you pursue yours. And it's like, for me, that adds another layer on top of what you typically hear, which is just like, keep moving, keep going, push, like fail so you can get better at failing, stuff like that.

**Chris Williamson** (2:29)
Yeah, it seems like there's something to do with earnestness and sincerity and sort of ironic speech in here. So I think when people are speaking ironically, there's a distance between you and your speech.
So being sincere sort of carries a type of vulnerability with it. You're saying, this is my position. This is something that I believe in. Whereas when everybody is always being ironic, and I think that identifying something as cringe is like the non-engaging way of being ironic. Like saying that's cringe is the same as, the exact same as saying, that's good. But that's the same sentence. Right? And I think you have this sort of distance between your beliefs and your statements. Like you don't actually put your beliefs out there. You make statements about stuff that's typically critical. And then you have your beliefs, but your beliefs are yours. And nobody ever actually gets to interact with those. And by not putting your beliefs on the line, you can never be cringe. This is one of the interesting asymmetries. It's one of the reasons that I think critic, or what's called the Critique Sphere YouTube channels, have done so well, because it's very difficult to do a criticism of a Critique Sphere video, because it's two levels of irony.

**Zack Telander** (3:44)
Yeah, yeah, right.

**Chris Williamson** (3:45)
That person didn't mean that thing. They're there to take the piss. You can't take the piss out of someone taking the piss. Unless they tried to take the piss in a sincere way. But nobody ever does that. Nobody ever says, you know, this just didn't speak to me. It really didn't speak to me. I didn't feel anything. It's like, oh, God, you can do a criticism of that criticism. You know what I mean?

**Zack Telander** (4:06)
Irony is the song of a bird who's never left its cage. I saw that quote.

**Chris Williamson** (4:12)
What's that mean?

**Zack Telander** (4:13)
It's basically somebody who's never gone out and done anything. Or, you know, they use irony as the weapon, as the song that they sing. You know, the people calling others cringe, they use ironic. They use that as like a, it's like a force field, as well as a weapon to attack others.