“Cringiness” is subjective, but it also kind of isn’t, just like writing in a way.
When you read your old elementary or even middle school essays, you realize they are undeniably, objectively bad in every sense of what it means to have "good" writing. When you read Virginia Woolf's "The Death of the Moth", it undeniably beckons a chasmic introspection. When you read David Foster Wallace's "Consider the Lobster", it undeniably sparks contemplation on the essence of consumerism.
And when your Mom posts a picture of you at 7:22 AM in a wrinkled-up white oxford shirt that’s too small, a striped clip-on tie that’s slightly sideways and suffocatingly snug, black Adidas gym shorts, donning ankle-cut socks paired with pewter blue sandals, visage mimicking Trump’s mugshot, and not knowing what to do with your hands to all 476 of her Facebook friends…
… that’s undeniably cringe.
My Mom is a Facebook mom––a professional oversharer who enjoys flooding feeds with unnecessarily detailed accounts of our home life.
On the inaugural day of each school year, it’s “Eian! Go stand on the steps. Let me take a picture,” she’d say amidst the cacophony of teenage whines and shrill halts of the bus’ arrival.
Maybe these photos are excusable since it sort of is a “big” moment, but every year?
And what about the times when I’m simply eating? What does a man have to do to just grub in peace? Why is this on the internet?
Her photographic endeavors extend beyond mere privacy violation. The angles are all wrong, the lighting is unforgiving, my hair is half-soaked, my noodles are half-slurped. Even my ghastly purple phone case, an ill-fated choice immortalized in pixels, is present for other Moms to see.
These abominable, “artistic” photographic transgressions are but a prelude. The accompanying captions, rife with cringe, sing a narrative deserving of life imprisonment in the codes of language.
“Eian in action! #MomsOfFacebook #SoccerMom” she’d (probably) write underneath an image of me mid-fall with a 250-pound 6’4 “15-year-old” about to body check me across my own goal-line. She’s even got a pic of 13-year-old me performing Mario’s “Yahoo!” jump mid-game.
I’ve politely requested her (begged her) to stop, yet she seems to always forget my appeals sooner or later.
I find myself frustrated with her at times, but over the years, I've come to recognize that she's almost always right in any debate. In surrender, I’ve relinquished the habit of questioning her, whispering to myself the mantra “Just do whatever Mom says”, not born out of juvenile brattiness and my desire to escape scoldings, but in the genuine acknowledgment of the wisdom she carries.
And maybe she’s right about this too––the whole posting-stupid-pictures-of-my-sons-on-the-internet thing. Perhaps the very insignificance of each image is what renders them so Facebook-worthy.
In a world saturated with Photoshop, greenscreens, elaborate lighting setups, and expensive 8K cameras, perhaps my Mom emerges as a pictorial primitivist––an archivist of the commonplace, a seemingly mundane task, yet one that may harbor great sentimental significance.
Because when I look back at her portfolio, yes, it’s embarrassing but addictively nostalgic.
Come to think of it, I do the same thing, not with my kids but with schoolmates. If you don’t snap photos of your sleeping-beauty-esque friends, are you really friends?
In rebellion against superficial allure, Mom stands as the general, weighing authenticity over aesthetics. Even now, as I scroll through her timeline, I'm confronted with a collage of memories—awkward, stupid, horribly-taken, but undeniably real.
You might denounce her nonchalance to my objections as poor parenting, a manifestation of control indifferent to my welfare.
Or, you could say that her apparent neglect is a form of tutelage, a lesson in that, someday, my gratitude will blossom for these captured moments.
Or, maybe it isn’t about me. Maybe behind each cringe-worthy post lies a mother's attempt to collect herself and just stop, grasping, with aching hands, the remaining, yet vanishing echoes of her boys’ childhood that seem to fade away too quickly––a silent plea, imploring the detainment of time’s relentless advance even for just a second.
Mom has 476 followers, yet none of her 3384 photos are for them.
Her camera doesn’t capture perfection, and I’m glad that it doesn’t.
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