Cringe is a funny thing.
The Germans call it Fremdschämen — a feeling of second-hand embarrassment on someone else’s behalf — and it is essentially an empathy attack. But for some reason, probably the same reason people like horror movies, people actually get a weird thrill out of cringing along with someone else’s misfortune and so cringeworthy content is collected and shared on places like the subreddit r/Cringetopia.
Of course if you’re actively enjoying the cringe a bit too much you’re engaging in an entirely different German concept: Schadenfreude.