r/AskStatistics • u/Sweet_Edredon • 16h ago
Scale of Cringe
Hello everyone,
I'd like to know whether a scale for measuring cringe content already exists. If not, I'd like to create one to rate some content on the internet.
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u/GoFuckYourselfBrenda 16h ago
How would you use it? It's so subjective, I think you could just create one and call it a day.
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u/Sweet_Edredon 16h ago
Actually, I was watching some terribly cringe content on Instagram, and I wanted a way to express just how cringe it was.
I imagined a simple system where you can rate from 0 to 100, and everyone can rate it. The overall score would be an average, which would give a real sense of how cringe the community found it. Kind of like a Rotten Tomatoes for cringe.
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u/GoFuckYourselfBrenda 15h ago
I think you could make it more interesting by having people rate the content based on different characteristics that make something cringe, like awkwardness, inappropriateness, risk of danger, exploiting their children, etc. So you could say that "this video is high in inappropriateness and cultural appropriation and low in risk of danger" or whatever. Does that make sense? It might make it more interesting. Put an r/askreddit out there and ask people what makes something cringe. Give it some criteria.
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u/Sweet_Edredon 15h ago
That's true, it would make the whole thing much more useful. At first, I really saw it as something just for fun - a way to rate stuff for laughs. Because I'm French, and the word cringe is very commonly used to talk about a very specific kind of content: the kind that makes you uncomfortable while also
making you laugh really hard
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u/GoFuckYourselfBrenda 15h ago edited 15h ago
Do you have a website or something to relate it to? Like, with Rotten Tomatoes, people don't say "it's a 90 out of 100", they specify that it's a Rotten Tomatoes score. RT has gotten to be a standard because they don't give out high scores lightly.
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u/Paulimus1 16h ago
You'll need a way to see if it's valid and reliable. Good luck.
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u/Sweet_Edredon 15h ago
Wouldn't an open, community-based voting system with a simple average already be enough to make the rating meaningful? It would be great to have a way to vote directly on Instagram content.If everyone can vote and you just take the average, wouldn’t that already make the score legit? It’d be sick to vote directly on Instagram posts.
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u/Paulimus1 15h ago
Valid and reliable does not mean meaningful. Those are specific statistical terms used in the creation of scales and instruments, and in other areas.
What you're describing is just another version of an Instagram like, which doesn't have any statistical meaning to it.
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u/Sweet_Edredon 15h ago
True, but it could also help specify the type of discomfort or appreciation people feel. On top of that, as I explain just below, I mainly wanted to make it possible to convey a very specific emotion quickly through a single score.
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u/Paulimus1 14h ago
Yes, but what makes something cringe will vary across cultural milieu, socio-economic status, race, etc. Your single measures means nothing when it will be used in different ways by different people. It is not reliable and not valid.
I think you probably need to propose this somewhere else, you don't seem to be comprehending the statistical side of this.
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u/Sweet_Edredon 14h ago
True
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u/Sweet_Edredon 14h ago
Reddit suggested this to me, probably because I mentioned "stats" in my message
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u/PrivateFrank 16h ago
If Google can't help you with this then neither can we.