Cringe content is popular all over the internet, as it seems to be a genre that has unlimited sources to pull from, but today we’ll be diving deeper into the subreddits CringetopiaRM (or Cringetopia Remastered) and Cringetopia_Two. The two groups are partnered with one another and have amassed an impressive 116k followers combined, over the course of only 2 and a half years. To learn more about how these two realms of Cringetopia came about, we reached out to Reddit user Dragonier_, one of the moderators of Cringetopia_Two, and Timo, one of the moderators of CringetopiaRM. 

“Both this and our partner sub, CringetopiaRM, were created as a continuation of the former Cringetopia subreddit,” Dragonier_ told Bored Panda. “As for the inspiration, I’ll attempt to give you a (not so) brief rundown of our recent history, as it is only really explainable in this context. About a year or so ago, the original Cringetopia ran into issues where the owner decided that it would be a good idea to create a Reddit-like website dedicated to hosting the community, and attempted to migrate their user base to it,” the moderator explained. 

“The reason for this has been, so far, speculation amongst the community, but is a mix of increasingly strict site-wide rules on Reddit making the sub’s operations restrictive, and the possibility that the owner wanted to generate their own revenue through a proxy site.”

“To motivate their users to make the move, they formulated a story where a rogue moderator (who I shall not name) posed as a furry and started trolling the subreddit by only allowing furry-related posts and posts that praised the furry community - one of the primary communities that we would consider cringe,” Dragonier_ continued. “So it was against the nature of the subreddit.” 

“This ended up backfiring on them, as it subsequently caused the deterioration of the former subreddit, and influenced the creation of a number of ‘splinter’ subreddits to form by their own members in protest of this,” he told Bored Panda. “CringetopiaRM and Cringetopia_Two are simply the two subs that gained the most traction in this time as the original community split and flocked to these.”

Timo, moderator of CringetopiaRM, added that he was confident that this new subreddit would gain a large following, because the original Cringetopia had 2 million members. “That's why I wanted to invest a lot of time in it,” he told Bored Panda. “Seeing it grow made me happy to see that we did a good job and that our work paid off.”

“For me, it has been quite rewarding to see both communities grow to the size that they are, and you can’t help but smugly grin in light of what has happened,” Dragonier_ shared. “Whilst Cringetopia_Two may not be as large as our partner sub, we still host a faithful community, and the emphasis is not on the size of the sub but the quality of our posts. I fear we may eventually face the same problems as the original Cringetopia subreddit as we grow in size, but such is the ‘lifecycle’ of any community on this website. So we will enjoy this freedom whilst we still have it…”

The moderators explained that both subs can be seen as the successors of the former Cringetopia subreddit. “However I can not take credit for that, as that was down to u/Reddit-User-3000. We are just part of the teams that carefully moderate these subreddits,” Dragonier_ added.

We were also curious what the moderators’ thoughts were on why people enjoy this type of cringey content so much, considering that it seems to bring people physical pain. “I think it all boils down to our mutual need for drama,” Dragonier_ told Bored Panda. “People want to watch other people acting strange and abnormally, because it is entertaining to us. We all ironically enjoy feeling second-hand embarrassment for others and reading the opinions and reactions from other people in the community. I think it is a positive thing.” 

He also noted with a laugh that he doesn’t think his community’s posts go so far as causing viewers pain very often. “But our members tend to frequently use this analogy in a metaphorical sense,” he added.

“I liked watching cringey posts to see that not everybody is perfect,” Timo told Bored Panda. “I could also have a laugh at how stupid some people are, but I took high precautions to make sure nobody would get bullied on the subreddit by validating if a person has been posted on the subreddit before,” he added. “Cringe just gives a strange feeling that you don't get a lot in public, if I am being honest.”

And while the page is intended to be a fun space, Dragonier_ also noted that the moderators work hard to ensure that these posts and comments do not turn into harassment. “Or inspire what we call ‘witch hunts’, where members from our community seek the accounts of the individuals in our posts en masse with the intention of harassing them,” he noted. “It’s a responsibility we have to take very seriously, because we know it can have massive negative impacts on the individuals involved.”

“We don’t want to make people feel distressed,” the moderator of Cringetopia_Two told Bored Panda. “So it’s imperative to ensure that the opinions expressed within our community are contained. However, understandably we cannot accept responsibility for what our members do outside of the subreddit. All we can do is promote this ethical behavior within the bounds of our community.”

We were also curious if Dragonier_ could share any personal favorite posts that he’s ever seen shared in Cringetopia. “I generally like all posts that come through the door from our members,” he told Bored Panda. “However, there is one post that has stood out to me the most, and it’s a screenshot of someone unironically saying something utterly disgusting along the lines of ‘none of the kids in the Uvalde shooting went to heaven’. I just thought it was a comment that was extremely disrespectful to the families involved and deserves a spot on our subreddit as one of the best worst posts of all time.”

“It was one of those posts that you feel your face physically screw up at, it’s that cringe,” he added. “These kinds of posts are the ones that I am particularly fond of, because they are the posts that deserve to be called out the most, and are the peak of cringe content on here. And I’m very proud of our community that we generally hold a mutual agreement on this, that there is a line which we do not cross.”

Finally, we asked the moderators if they believes certain people are more prone to being cringey or if we’re all capable of falling victim to the cringe. “You could argue that there are certain communities like ‘TikTok’ or ‘furries’ which are cringe as a whole. However, I think that’s a very narrow-minded view, and being cringe is on a personal basis, rather than a collective one,” Dragonier_ told Bored Panda. “There are people who act cringe from all communities, but there are also those who are not and don’t fit the idea of our sub. Our subreddit provides both a platform for us to share this content, but also one to judge whether it deserves to be here. And in some cases, we do vote in favor of the accused, rather than the accuser. Not everyone from a certain community is ‘cringe’, per-se.”

“Some stereotypes of people are indeed more vulnerable to being posted on the sub than others, but everybody can be cringe,” Timo added.