Hit 100 upvotes on a cringey meme I posted 4 years ago and my stomach dropped

So I was scrolling through my old Facebook memories last night and found this meme I made back in 2020. It was one of those 'nobody:' jokes with a picture of a cat looking angry. I thought it was so clever at the time. Now it just makes me wince. But the weird part was seeing it had 100 likes. That number hit me hard. I honestly don't know if I should feel proud that people liked it back then or embarrassed that this is what my peak creativity looked like. Has anyone else gone back and found an old post that got way more attention than it deserved? How do you deal with the secondhand embarrassment from your own past self?

2 comments

2 Comments

ben_ross511mo ago

Hold on, I gotta disagree a little bit here. You're looking at 100 upvotes from years ago and feeling bad, but that's a sign that you actually put yourself out there and connected with people. That dumb cat meme made 100 people laugh or smile during a pretty rough year for everyone. Yeah, your taste has changed and you might cringe now, but that just means you've grown as a person, which is a good thing. Getting embarrassed by your old stuff is totally normal, but I think you're being way too hard on yourself. Nobody starts out making perfect content or having perfect taste. You were just having fun and sharing a joke. The fact that 100 strangers liked it shows you were doing something right, even if it feels silly now. Don't let the secondhand embarrassment take away from the fact that you made people laugh, even if it was a "cringey" way to do it.

hugoh551mo ago

People forget that the internet was mostly about sharing silly fun back then, not building a perfect personal brand. Your younger self was just being human and sharing a laugh, which is more authentic than most of the polished stuff we see now. Cringing at your past is a sign you've grown, but you don't have to punish yourself for it. That cat meme was a small moment of joy in a hard year, and that matters more than how it looks to you now.