Cringe culture says stop. We say lean in.

It's Been a Minute

NPR

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4.6 • 8.8K Ratings

🗓️ 20 August 2025

⏱️ 22 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Has online hate ever been this cruel?

Brendan Abernathy is a singer-songwriter who went viral earlier this year for an earnest performance of his song "married in a year." The backlash was immediate, and one word popped up over and over again in the comments: "cringe."

Brittany and Ramtin Arablouei, co-host of NPR's Throughline, get into the rise of cringe culture: where it comes from, how it's hurting us, and how leaning into cringe is good for art. And Ramtin talks with Brendan about how to cope with the criticism, and Brendan debuts a new song about his experience. Brendan's new album is out September 26th.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Support for NPR and the following message come from the estate of Joan B. Kroc, whose bequest
0:05.5	serves as an enduring investment in the future of public radio and seeks to help NPR produce programming
0:12.2	that meets the highest standards of public service in journalism and cultural expression.
0:20.2	Hello, hello. I'm Brittany Luce and you're listening to It's Been a Minute from NPR,
0:25.3	a show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident.
0:37.2	Rompin, welcome back to It's Been a Minute.
0:39.8	Happy to be back, Brittany.
0:41.1	Thanks for having me.
0:42.1	So riddle me this, okay.
0:43.7	You have a public-facing job as the host of NPR's ThruLine podcast.
0:49.1	You are also a musician who's been on tour in the past.
0:53.6	So I'm curious, if you had the choice to go viral, would you want to?
0:58.7	Yes or no?
0:59.8	I can definitively say, hell no.
1:03.1	No way.
1:04.8	Absolutely not.
1:06.8	I don't know.
1:07.3	The thing about virality is it doesn't seem to pay off.
1:09.5	Not always.
1:10.3	Not always.
1:10.8	But for me, if it paid off for someone like Jules LeBron, you know, like the woman, very demure, very mindful, very demure.
1:18.6	Because, I mean, she's a homeowner. And I am not. And I am not either.
	...

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