this post was submitted on 09 Feb 2026
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Will I ever stop having cringe takes? (hexbear.net)
submitted 1 day ago by dil@hexbear.net to c/askchapo@hexbear.net
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Over the past few years, I've been sliding left ideologically, and as I move further left my old positions seem cringy.

That's expected when you change your worldview and realize you were parroting (e.g.) CIA propaganda, but it's left me feeling a bit ungrounded. I'm worried that in another year I'll look back and think my current views are dumb. Tbh, they almost certainly are.

Does this go away eventually? Or are y'all constantly refining your understanding, so you always dislike your views from a year ago?

Also:

If folks leave, where do they go from here? Are they just picking their preferred flavor of communism/anarchism? Are there other categories of leftism that they're heading to? I'm sure some backslide, but I mean heading somewhere new - like I didn't know people actually liked DPRK until I heard about "tankies." I saw a group that doesn't believe in objective reality?

I'm not really expecting to look at anything new and not be a Marxist, but I'd like to know what's out there to be sure.

I just wanna pick one goddamn worldview, never change it, and still be right about everything all the time. Is that so much to ask?

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[–] prole@hexbear.net 9 points 1 day ago

I have this same feeling almost constantly and I'm over 40. I've been a "leftist" of some variety most of my life, especially if we're counting anything that's anti-capitalist as left. I look at it as a good thing. My present self might cringe at my past self, but that's the cost of learning new shit.

I only really accepted this in the last 5 years or so doing software development. I have worked on the same project for 6+ years and constantly run into my old code and think how terrible it is and how could I ever be this dumb, etc. Now I just view that experience as the cost of improving.

If I looked at my old code (or my old ideology) and it was exactly the same as it is now, I would probably cringe even harder.