Since the dawn of Facebook albums, millennials have been cursed with an omnipresent fear of being “cringe” online. The trait itself is strangely intangible — not necessarily defined by something you can see, hear, or even reliably identify through social cues, but by a deep, intrinsic feeling that you have tried too hard, and therefore been earnestly, painfully uncool.

Lately, we’re told that cringe is “back.” You can’t scroll without being inundated with relics of 2016: hazy nostalgia...