Do this instead.
I’m seeing a growing trend.
People are cringing at their own content.
Just like this:
And this:
You get the point.
Now we all know LinkedIn is the cringiest place in the world anyway, so we should take this with a pinch of salt.
But I’m seeing this trend across social — especially TikTok and Instagram.
People are “claiming” their cringe.
And I think it’s a terrible mistake.
The Cringe Should Come Later — Not Straight Away
“Anyone who isn’t embarrassed of who they were last year probably isn’t learning enough.” — Alain de Botton
Why would you put something out on the internet for the whole world to see forever if you’re not 100% proud to own it?
If you don’t believe in it wholeheartedly?
Don’t get me wrong; there are plenty of articles I look back on where I think, “What was I thinking?” For example, one of my first articles on Medium was about losing my virginity. (I swiftly deleted that one.)
But this idea that you’re immediately cringing (read: ashamed) of a tweet/video/post as soon as it’s left the gate seems crazy to me.
Why would you do that?
You’re doing it wrong.
What You Should Do Instead
“The moment that you feel that, just possibly, you’re walking down the street naked, exposing too much of your heart and your mind and what exists on the inside, showing too much of yourself. That’s the moment you may be starting to get it right.” — Neil Gaiman
Raw. Naked. Vulnerable.
Write as closely to your real feelings as possible. They’re the only thing you can’t argue with.
You should feel like a stripper.
Now you might not know what’s going to come out or how people will respond. But if you can feel the opposite of cringe — genuine pride — about something you share?
Well, that’s almost certainly going to make you feel better.
It’ll probably also “perform” better, whatever that means.
Don’t Worry About What People Think
“You wouldn’t worry so much about what others think of you if you realized how seldom they do.” — Olin Miller
I get it.
You’re worried your friends, family, and colleagues are going to be stewing over your post, thinking about it all day and dissecting it over dinner with their nearest and dearest.
I have news for you. They won’t.
They don’t give a f*ck.
In fact, there’s a good chance they’ll scroll past, think about it for a couple of seconds, and then keep scrolling.
It’s the nature of the beast.
Now granted, sometimes you’ll post something that people get angry with. Me and my friend Maria talk about this sometimes. I’ve posted things before that spark mild fury in the comments. (See this post about outsourcing.)
Maria gets it way more for her pieces about feminism.
The point is, that’s okay. You should welcome it.
Here’s why:
- I’d rather people feel something towards my writing than apathy. Hate and love are two sides of the same coin. Apathy is the true opposite.
- You learn something. If there’s a point of view you haven’t fully explored that pisses people off, you’re going to know about it — and that makes you a better writer.
- It can be funny to watch! In one of his recent emails, my friend Michael describes the experience of starting an internet fight. “I had an article on Medium go viral. // The comments section went a bit wild. // It felt like a UFC fight card. // And I was suddenly a fight organizer.”
And if You Can’t Stop Worring About What Other People Think, at Least Put It in the Right Perspective
“Irrespective of what happened at the beginning of time, we know there was a period 13.8 billion years ago when the part of the Universe that we can see today, containing over 350 billion large galaxies and with a diameter of over 90 billion light years, was compressed into a region of space smaller than a single atom.”
Space.
It makes me feel super small — and that’s why I love it.
Being out in nature always makes me realise that none of this is important. What we do — posting content on the internet — matters not one jot.
It really doesn’t.
You see, how many of those plant-in-the-background YouTube videos do you actually remember?
Exactly.
If you want to be remembered, do something memorable.
On a recent episode of My First Million, Shaan tells the story of a man pulling his wheelchair across the finish line of an arduous race:
Now that’s true grit.
People will remember that.
Don’t Take Yourself Too Seriously
“All the world’s a stage, // And all the men and women merely players; // They have their exits and their entrances; // And one man in his time plays many parts […]”
I hate to break it to you.
We’ll all soon be dead.
According to the BBC, the approximate number of people who’ve ever lived is 120 billion. And there are currently ~8.3 billion people alive today.
This means the dead outnumber us 15:1.
How many of these people do we collectively think about on a daily basis? My guess is probably less than a thousand.
That’s an infinitesimally small number:
Point being?
We’re not special snowflakes.
We’ll soon be forgotten, too.
“History is something very few people have been doing while everyone else was ploughing fields and carrying water buckets.” — Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens
So post that piece of content that will make you lose sleep — not because it’s cringe, but because it comes from your soul.
If it doesn’t make you sh*t your pants just a teeny bit, chuck it on the scrapheat.
AI will keep churning out soulless content.
We need your real stuff.
Give it to us.
Join 5,000 readers who get my monthly essays about living and working on your own terms.