Is Cringe Culture Killing Your Creative Career

Creative Boom: Insight Career Is cringe culture killing your creative career? Self-doubt, impostor syndrome and the fear of looking arrogant could be costing you more than you think. Here's some advice on how to push through. Written By: Tom May 21 April 2026 Have you ever finished a piece of work you're genuinely proud of, then talked yourself out of sharing it? You're in very good company. We creatives are notoriously bad at self-promotion. The reasons can be personal and complex, but the results are clear-cut. Good work goes unseen, opportunities are missed, and less talented but louder voices fill the space instead.

So is any of this actually necessary? Or has cringe culture become a habit that's costing you more than you realise? We chatted to three creatives who share their honest experiences of self-promotion, confidence and the oft-painful process of bigging up your own work. Why it feels so hard Jason Roberts, designer and illustrator at Victory Over All, has been wrestling with this for years. "Up until recently, I've felt like a bit of a newbie in the design industry," he says. "Which is ridiculous, because I've been designing since my mid-teens, working professionally since 2010 and running my own design business for the past 10 years.

Still, though, I question why anyone would want to listen to what I have to say, or value the experience I have." Impostor syndrome is part of it, but not all of it. Take Carole Chevalier, designer and published illustrator at carolechevalier.co.uk. "There's a part of me that feels, or perhaps hopes, that my work should speak for itself," she admits. "What I create is my way of expressing myself. So it feels very hard and tiring to have to do more, just so people can appreciate it, or even discover it." Artist and founder Sheena Bulpitt frames it as a fear of becoming indistinguishable from the noise.

"There are so many people out there, all trying to get eyes on their work, that any attempt at self-promotion feels like it has an element of cringe; like you're the same as everyone else vying for attention," she concedes. "But it's a necessary evil." The suckiness of making videos Necessary, maybe, but that doesn't always make it pleasurable. Especially when it comes to serving the modern god of short-form video. "Talking to the camera with a mic in my hand for Instagram reels feels cringe to me," says Jason. "It's a love/hate relationship. I want to do it, I like video editing, and I know it helps my business.

But, oh boy, do I cringe when watching back the footage or hitting that post button." Carole shares the same discomfort, and as a French speaker working in English, the fear goes deeper. "I was so anxious about people judging me," she says. "English is not my first language, so I felt very vulnerable." Consequently, her approach has been to build exposure gradually: first appearing briefly on camera, then adding a voiceover. She's currently working up to speaking directly to the camera.

"The problem is, this process is very slow, and in the meantime, many other creatives with less experience have gone way further." What you lose when you hold back The natural response to all of this stress, of course, is to bury your head in the sand. But in practice, that probably won't end well. "I recently held back from sharing a rebrand for a TV channel, and I massively regretted it," recalls Jason. "I was incredibly proud of the work, but kept telling myself there were other, more important tasks than putting together a case study. Then the TV channel was shut down, following a corporate merger and budget cuts.

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The article addresses a contemporary issue affecting creative professionals, making it significant for brand strategy, while offering insights that are relevant but not entirely groundbreaking.