What was your cringe teen/preteen phase?

I was a "ironically" racist as a young teen, it took me till my early adulthood to realise that being ironically racist is just being racist, and the edgy "humour" that is made at others expense isn't funny or clever, and is incompatible with the kind, empathetic person I wanted to be.

Cringing at my teen self pushes me further into deprogramming myself from that shit, but I'm encouraged by the adage "if you don't look at yourself from a decade ago and cringe, you wasted that decade".

Niceguy

"Why aren't girls interested in guys like me?! 😭"

Because you're weird and overbearing.

Man I'm trying to get through my cringe adult phase, I don't have time to dwell on the past.

Anime, but it wasn't popular yet, most people didn't know what it was. Suncoast video was the only place you could go to buy anime VHS tapes.

Today I'd have been called a weaboo, but back then I was just weird and cringe.

All of it.

Currently seeing a counselor in my mid 30s to deal with some long undiagnosed issues. Go to the doctor folks.

I watched Star Trek, Pokemon, Gargoyles and Dino Adventure Jurassic Tripper - all of those ran on TV here, which was awesome.
Apart from that, I probably read four to five books every week and I even won a reading contest at the local library one time. They loved me so much there, they just gave me books sometimes to keep for myself. (That's how I discovered "The Day of the Triffids", and it's glorious.)

I was extremely into that whole "Native American" thing and read all kinds of fiction about it. I loved the Winnetou movies to death and I must've read the whole works of Karl May. That was definitely cringe and a lot of people made fun of me because of that. I still think they're pretty well written books, but not unproblematic, of course.

Apart from that, I tinkered a lot with electronics and got pretty good at soldering and semi-good at fixing circuits. When I was seven years old, my dad bought a computer and I learned how to work with DOS, Win95 and Linux. I definitely was a weird kid and I didn't have many friends (still don't), but I enjoyed my childhood regardless of that, because my parents supported all of my endeavours.

I listened to rave and techno music, which was very unusual here in North Germany. None of the radio stations played it, but we had cable radio so I was able to listen to it and fall in love with it. Needless to say, a young teenager listening to Scooter screaming "HOW MUCH IS THE FISH?" just increased the level of teasing from my classmates. But fuck them, it was great music to dance to!

Nowadays I work as a coder in a small advertising agency, so I guess my childhood prepared me pretty well for my adulthood. Overcoming social anxiety was hard, though. I only achieved that in my late 20s. Turns out that growing up as an only child in a small village messes with your head a little bit.

Edit: Oh, and I was hardcore against alcohol, for some stupid reason. I never drank anything and when my friends went to a party and had a good time, I was an ass about it afterwards. For some reason I wanted everyone to be as abstinent as me, lol. Nowadays I drink occasionally and I enjoy it, I don't know what was up with me back then.

I had the cliche phase of thinking that I was a vampire because a combination of a few things. I have a problem with my teeth where it caused my "K9s" to protrude outwards, I don't have a normally detectable pulse and I've always been able to smell other peoples blood from abnormally far away but I can never smell my own. I know now that these are things that can happen to anyone but back then, I didn't know any better.

Two.

Really into aliens and flourescent things. Took tons of pictures with a black light and highlighter liquid poured into water so it would glow.

Thought I was a cowboy. Had tons of boots, cowboy hats and chewed tobacco. Even raised goats in highschool agriculture courses and subscribed to the typical country boy ideologies ( you can guess what I mean but can proudly say I grew out of that pretty fast in college). tbh raising goats was very fun.

I had hope for the future and planned a whole life once.

I swear I managed to go through all the typical cringe phases in middle school: weeb, nice girl, smart ass, edgy atheists, you name it lol I'm shocked that I had friends at all during that time.

Being undiagnosed autistic at the time, I suspect everything I did was. I also don't know because I thought everything was fine.

I could go find some people I went to school with, but one, I hope they don't remember me, and two I hope they all moved far away and are super successful.

I thought I was far superior to people because I liked Pink Floyd and their music is actually meaningful and intellectual... yikes. I still like Pink Floyd though

Edgy atheist.

I am still nonreligious and dislike organized religion tho, I just dont talk about it anymore.

does "every fucking word that came out of my mouth" count?

Really, REALLY bad poetry. About My Pain

When I was 11-12 I'd turn up to shops/stores in pajamas. I felt so rebellious

yes.

It ended for you?

Chūnibyō (中二病, lit. 'middle-school second-year syndrome') is a Japanese colloquial term typically used to describe adolescents with delusions of grandeur. These teenagers are thought to desperately want to stand out and convince themselves that they have hidden knowledge or secret powers.

Thinking I had the answer to everything and that I was the only one who was "thinking logically". Emotions were weak and irrelevant, the only things that mattered were facts (i.e. anything that I believed). I swear to god, if those cunts like Jordan Peterson had gotten a hold of me I would've turned even more insufferable. As it stood, I basically just became a mostly far-left cringe lord with exactly zero understanding about how the world actually works. Luckily I've learned since then.

For a few years in middle school, I was waaaaay too into Monty Python.

I had a bit of a David Icke phase when I was a teenager. Thankfully, that ended!

Ages 2-25

Part 2: Learn to Hide It Ages 25-present.

I liked stealing things from my friends and running away, only to give them back when caught. I was such a shit

Animé from ages 15-18. It was the mid-to-late '90s and only the weird kids were into animé. My social life improved immensely when I grew out of that phase.

Weirdly I don't think I've ever had a "phase" like other people seem to have gone through. Is this common enough to not have had something like that?

I guess it was possibly as a teen when I was being LOLRANDOM on internet forums. Not sure if that counts tho because I have always been an internet dweller.

Reading edgy manga was cool.

Fundamentalist.

Kaneki Ken profile picture, anyone?

Had several of these , only telling you one :

Thought being a hipster was cꝏl

You really really really don't wanna know what the others were