The Politics of Golden Fries

Abstract

This study examines cringe political communication on Czech TikTok, asking how and why politicians fail to meet the platform’s demands for authenticity and cultural literacy. Combining digital ethnography with qualitative interpretive analysis, it applies a two-stage case selection procedure – purposive sampling validated against audience-response markers such as comments, ridicule, and derivative content – to 280 videos from 75 accounts of candidates in the 2025 Czech parliamentary elections. The analysis yields a five-category typology: Platform Tourism, Try‑Hard Authenticity, Gen Z Wannabe, Awkward Trend Attempts, and Performative Cringe Spectacle. Cringe is conceptualized not merely as communicative failure but as an analytical lens exposing structural tensions between platform-native cultural codes and institutional political authority, while transgressive performance can also work strategically as a source of visibility and relatability. Grounded in affect theory, the entertaining citizen paradigm, the personalization of politics, and platform studies, the study offers a systematic framework for analyzing political cringe.