Embrace Cringe, Become Ungovernable

I’ve been away for a while because Blindspot’s Lumos House is coming back to Austin during SXSW! If you’re in town, check out Lumos House here and sign up.

Onwards.

I have a simple, terrible truth to share about success: cringe works. The things that make us uncomfortable, that trigger second-hand embarrassment, that we swore we’d never stoop to: those things can often help you win.

That YouTuber with the exaggerated facial expressions? Millions of views.

That LinkedIn post that reads like a corporate diary entry? Viral engagement.

That overly personal, almost desperate TikTok? Unstoppable growth.

Before we go on, here’s today brain teaser:

And if we’re being honest, most people know this deep down. All of us could play the game. We could lean into cringe and probably see more success. But I want to explore if we should.

The Lateral Thinking Twist

The key to good lateral thinking is recognizing when a logical conclusion leads you somewhere you don’t actually want to go.

• If being cringe performs better in an A/B test, should you apply it to everything?

• If clickbait headlines drive more traffic, should you only write clickbait?

• If aggression wins in business negotiations, should you always be aggressive?

The mistake is assuming that a winning strategy in one area is a winning strategy everywhere. The reality? What “works” once can be a contextual succes and might not be a solution for the long run.

In my case, I’ve realized that the damage I would do to my productivity and mental health by being cringe is not worth it in the long run. And, most importantly, I know I couldn’t keep it up for long.

When Winning = Losing

Some examples where the seemingly right decision can be the wrong one:

Maximizing Profits → Destroying Long-Term Trust or Retention

A company could increase revenue by adding more ads, charging hidden fees, or using manipulative pricing. But long-term? Customers leave, brand reputation tanks, and nobody trusts them anymore.

It CAN work if you’re a monopoly (cough Google cough) or have exclusive deals nobody can back out of (cough ticketing industry cough) - but that’s only because there’s no alternative, it doesn’t mean the practice itself is what made it work.

Optimizing Productivity → Burning Out

We’re in the hyper-optimization era anyway, so we’re all figuring out how to push harder, multitask more, and shave down break time to get more done. It works—until they we burnout, make worse decisions, and our productivity plummets.

We possibly never get back to where we were before.

But nobody talks about efficient productivity because it’s not as popular and won’t get as many clicks.

More Choices → Worse Decisions

A store finds that giving customers more options increases time spent browsing and encourages exploration. But too many choices lead to decision paralysis, and fewer people actually buy.

Plenty of studies shows less is more, including the famous ice cream shop example, where a shop with 6 flavors had a 30% conversion rate compared to a shop with 24 flavors that had a 3% conversion rate.

Engagement Farming → Self-Loathe

We’ve all seen someone “sell their soul” for likes. Sure, their engagement skyrockets, but at what cost? If you start performing for the algorithm instead of yourself, you become trapped in it.

All this being said - please be ungovernable. By that, I mean don’t desperately try to find the magic sauce or A/B test the hell out of everything hoping you’ll find one recipe that works. That only works once in a billion times.

Answer: that perfect candidate applied for a junior position. They were overqualified and the company knew they wouldn’t stay long in that position.

Your instinct might have been to blame the company, but if you don’t look at things from the right angle, you’ll never see the full picture.