that’s cringe
A series exploring everyone’s greatest fear: being embarrassed.
The definition of “being cringe online” is ever-evolving, but most of us, it seems, can agree on one thing: Posting photos of yourself crying is one of the worst offenses. You’ve seen them before: casually lit and seemingly taken on a whim, with tear-stained, rosy cheeks and bloodshot eyes as the main feature. They’re sometimes taken in a bathroom, like Dove Cameron’s from 2022, or in a car, like Emma Chamberlain’s multiple teary-eyed posts. The crier in question usually has effortlessly tousled hair and a hint of black makeup flaking along their bottom row of eyelashes. The evidence of their emotional turmoil can be either posted solo or hidden among an artfully curated photo dump. If you’re Bella Hadid, though, a collection of them can be worthy of its own post.
While it has the appearance of vulnerability, a crying selfie often leaves followers with more questions than answers. What is the crying selfie-taker trying to communicate, actually? That they’re sad and misunderstood and need to turn to the internet as a cry for help? Or maybe they just really, really want us to know they’re pretty when they cry?
As one Reddit user on r/unpopularopinions puts it: “Taking pictures of yourself while crying to post on social media is super cringey. Please stop doing this for attention.” (The dozens of responses — ranging from “Exactly!” to “I don’t get it either. Nothing about it seems genuine” — tell me this opinion is actually pretty popular.) And yet, the crying selfies persist. Are they actually brave and unfiltered? Are they a symptom of main-character syndrome? Is Bella Hadid really that influential? I talked to six self-professed crying-selfie posters to find out.
The first time I posted a crying TikTok was at the end of 2021. I was in a job that I was miserable in. I felt like nothing was working out for me. I posted a video of me walking and crying. The caption was, “When you’re having an emotional breakdown living under capitalism and you put on ‘Come Back, Be Here’ to lowkey cry by the Thames and on the night bus trying to remind yourself why you moved to this city in the first place even though it feels like none of your dreams are coming true.” That was a lot. I wanted to document that to remind myself it’s not always going to be this bad.
What made me want to post the video was afterwards, I was still walking by the Thames, and I was putting my elbow on the banister and I was pondering life and this gentleman actually came up to me and was like, “Are you okay? Do you need help?” It was kind of nice that someone gave a shit, you know? When I got home, I was like, I should post this because I bet there are people that would relate to this. My faith in humanity was restored, basically. I felt more comfortable posting it on TikTok because most of my followers are people that I don’t know.
The video was a flop. It got 99 views and 15 likes, but one of my acquaintances actually commented on it and was like, “I feel like this all the time. It definitely gets better. Hugs and kisses.” She’s someone that I would say is more successful than me in my career, so I thought it was nice that she cared. I archived it maybe a year later. In 2022, I had a few TikToks blow up. I wanted to make more content, but I needed to audit my feed a little bit so that it’s not super-random content. Looking back at it, I was a little bit embarrassed, and the engagement was super low, so I was like, I should archive this.
I posted another crying selfie in 2023. There was a trend with Olivia Rodrigo’s song “Ballad of a Homeschooled Girl” where people put photos of “This is what I looked like when Sour came out and then this is what I looked like when Guts came out.” At that point, I was in a much better place in my career, andI was much happier. I had a selfie I took when I was in my previous job where there were issues regarding how I was treated as a woman of color in the workplace. My face was so swollen from feeling like I’m in danger and I was trying to go to HR. Nothing was being resolved, and I was miserable every day. I was picking my skin. So I was like, “This is what I looked like when Sour came out, and this is what I looked like when Guts came out,” and I was fucking slaying.
It felt therapeutic. I wasn’t really trying to get people to ask me what happened. I like to record myself in the lowest moments of my life. I have a recording of me quitting that job, but I never posted it. I just want future me to know that I’m doing so much better compared to that point in my life. It’s a good marker of how poorly someone can be doing, but then things always get better. —Venus Wong, 33, freelance writer, living in London
I grew up in the generation that had Instagram a little too young, and it was either you post memes or you divulge all your emotions at, like, 11 a.m. in your childhood bedroom. In early high school, I got really into pop-punk emo bands, and it was a huge part of my identity. I posted a photo of me genuinely sobbing after one of my favorite members of Panic! At the Disco left the band. I wanted people to know I was hurting. I felt compelled to share that this had happened. I had friends reach out and be like, “I felt the same way when Zayn left 1D, you’re gonna get through it.” I received support as if it were a personal loss. I was cleaning out that account recently and saw that photo and was like, This is so wildly inappropriate.
I’ll post crying selfies to my “close friends” Story probably once a month. I think even from a young age, you’re perceptive to how everything online is a manufactured image of yourself, and there are times where you want your authenticity to bleed through and for people to see your full emotional range. That’s how my friends who don’t live close to me anymore know I’m going through it.
A lot of it is related to the things in my life that take up the most emotional space, like my job. There was a period of my life where it was really hard to work at my job in politics. I definitely had this feeling of wanting to remind people that the thing that everyone is constantly talking about, like an election, is something that is affecting me and co-workers who I see as loved ones. I’ll post about any kind of academic success or personal success that I feel a deep sense of stress about, whether that’s being hopeful about law school or taking the LSAT. Every now and then, I’ll post a Therapy Thursday where I’ll take a picture of myself after therapy. Sometimes I’m glowing, and sometimes I’m not. —Regina B., 26, legal administrator, living in Washington, D.C.
I had a miscarriage in 2019 and shared about it online relatively soon after it happened. Around the first anniversary, I did a photo roundup of things relating to that time in my life, and one of them was a crying selfie. I debated whether or not I should put that in there because I already had this pervasive fear that people thought that I wanted attention, and that’s why I was sharing so much about the loss, but it felt like my reality. I was crying literally all the time, and I don’t think that it’s bad to put that out there. My husband is way more private than I am — he would never do that — but for me, it felt like the right thing to do, so I did.
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I’ve shied away in recent years from posting about heavier topics. If I’m watching something really sad or if a song makes me cry, sometimes I’ll take a picture of myself and share it. The most recent one is when I was watching Paradise. The second-to-last episode had me weeping, and so I took a selfie and posted a Story like, “Oh my God, this is the saddest show, you guys have to watch it.” If I’m crying over something that’s a little bit deeper to me, I’m not necessarily, at this point in my life, in a rush to post about it online. But if it’s for a sillier reason, I’m totally down.
I’ve been documenting my life for as long as I can remember. I’ve always been the person who’s taking a million pictures, not wanting to forget the moment, and sometimes that includes when I’m crying. I know it’s controversial, and a lot of people would say that it’s attention-seeking or a sign of our dystopian world that we’re in, but I really do think that maybe we’re taking it too seriously. If someone wants to cry on the internet, let’s let them. It feels natural to document every part of my life. It probably isn’t healthy, but it’s my reality. —Ayana Lange, 32, writer, living in Tampa, Florida
I’ve posted myself crying a lot on the internet. I think it’s a really beautiful way to build community when oftentimes your emotions are not necessarily validated by the people around you. As a Black woman, showing that we are human and that we don’t have to be poised all the time feels very liberating, but it also is very special that we can cultivate community around those moments because so many times, we have to pretend like we don’t cry.
The first time I posted myself crying on TikTok was in 2021. I was crying about my experience as a Black woman dating, because it legitimately feels impossible. It’s frustrating. You get told, “Keep your head in your books, go to good schools,” and then you realize that all these social experiences that you were promised you could have once you go to these schools, you’re completely robbed of because your womanhood is not validated and your personhood is not validated. While it shows up in dating, it also shows up in your social life. These are experiences every single woman I know is having. Everyone’s frustrated, but no one wants to talk about it because no one wants to be perceived as angry or bitter. A majority of responses were positive. It was people being like, “Girl, I get it, I’m tired, too.” I think when it comes to posting online and being vulnerable online, I think most people respect it because there’s an aspect of themselves they see within it that they might not be willing to own just yet.
There was a video of me crying about Cowboy Carter that was aired on the Today show without my consent. It’s fine. I posted that post on the internet; that comes with the territory. As a Black woman, that album meant so much to me. It was such a layered experience, and so I posted a video of me crying, listening to it in bed with a bonnet on. I didn’t think anyone was going to watch it. I’m at work the next day and I get a text message saying, “Is this you?” and it’s me crying on Today. The most recent post of me crying was me going through a breakup and getting my stuff back. I didn’t post it because I wanted to villanize that person, but because it was rooted in my emotional truth. —Katherine Tinsley, 26, multimedia producer and student, living in Chicago
The only post I’ve ever done of me crying was very artistically done after a breakup. It was half of my face zoomed in and a single tear running down my face.I posted it to Instagram in 2024 as part of a post-breakup Reel. It was hidden among a bunch of other videos. It was an old video from when I got divorced from my husband in 2021. I think I was talking to somebody about how my eyes change color when I cry, and I was documenting a lot of the divorce process and moving from New York to Miami. I knew one day I’d look back and be like, Oh, my God, I’m so much better off.
I eventually came out as lesbian, and I posted it after my first lesbian relationship. We dated for a few months and she couldn’t figure out if she wanted to be together or date other people, so I posted a cryptic little dump, if you will. I look really pretty when I cry. Not to be an asshole, but I do, so I was like, Here’s this single tear. I wasn’t looking for a response or alluding to a breakup; it was more of, like, an art piece.
I don’t regret anything I post online. I’m very thoughtful with what I post and intentional, and I use it as my artistic outlet. I’m a Libra, I love making things look pretty, and it’s a way for me to share my life. I have, like, zero followers, but it’s a little outlet for me. Would I necessarily post a crying thing again? Probably. I show up authentically as myself. —Sarah-Kate Young, 32, publicist, living in Miami Beach
I cry all the time. It’s not always sad. I cry not every day, but probably every other day. I’ve posted myself crying after I went on a walk and saw this old couple. Recently, I posted my eyes on the verge of welling up and was like, “If anybody speaks to me in the wrong tone, it’s over.” I know that it’s cringey, but I think I look really cute crying. I’ve probably posted myself crying over 30 times on my Instagram Story. Crying is such an underrated emotion, and I don’t agree with the general stigmatization of showing it. A big factor of why I take photos when I’m crying is to normalize it. I don’t have a diary or journal, so the photos are my way of documenting the good, bad, and ugly days.
A lot of the photos of me crying have been taken in bed when I’m watching a show. The Summer I Turned Pretty had me bawling my eyes out, and I didn’t want to get up to see what I look like in the mirror, but I wanted to see what I looked like. I posted that one because everyone was talking about it and everyone was doing it.
The last crying selfie I posted on my feed, I had just got done with work. It was a really long day and I was getting off the train to go home and a song really hit, and I think I was about to get my period, and it was just a release and I wanted to do it before I got inside. I kind of meme myself. Sometimes I’ll put why I’m crying, sometimes I won’t, but a lot of times, it’s a stupid reason to be crying.
It’s kind of my aesthetic, the sexy, sad-girl type of thing. I have this tattoo on my butt that says, “So sad, so sexy,” and I got that because I was in the club once and I did a little cry and was touching up in the bathroom and then this girl was like, “Why are you crying? Like, you’re so sexy, don’t cry.” It stuck with me ever since then, so I document it. It makes me feel better about it, I think. It makes it real. It’s just part of my lore. If my followers can’t handle my ugly cries, then they don’t deserve my thirst traps. —Edlyn, 33, hospitality worker living in New York City
