Both sides have their share of puritans but if there’s a different between the left and right:

Rightwingers are more straightforward because all they have is thinking that Jesus would cry if they touch themselves and that Satan created gay people.

Leftwingers feel like they jump through hoops about why “X is good but Y is bad”, come up with specific terms like “male gaze”, try using academic terms and maybe even add in layers of irony or mental gymnastics about how their tastes are better or whatever.

This also means they get upset if something they like is banned, without realizing it can be traced to the standards they tried implementing.

Rightoids just go “I must be pure or else I’ll burn in Hell I don’t wanna be a degenerate”.

2

I guess in terms of “media literacy”, the right favors “lore and worldbuilding” while the left favors “themes and messages”.

So that’s why one side “seems smarter” than the other… even though they still gets shit wrong and sometimes in bad favor.

3

Between Tumblr and DeviantArt, I think DA deserves the actual title of “ernest/sincere cringe” because Tumblr clearly shows sings of over self-awareness, irony and self-deprecating.

Could be because of the occasional/“secret” ties with SomethingAwful, but DA in comparison feels rather “straightforward” with how it can be.

Because people associate DA with “lol Sonic recolor OC’s on diapers with huge feet” but DA has things that aren’t even like that and still seem weird.

An example is unusual crossovers and when they either have a basic childish art style or just use actual images of the source material.

I rememeber someone doing a crossover of Judge Dredd and Power Rangers, where it’s just them stating “which Power Ranger would this Judge be”.

The kind of stuff that isn’t even too weird or gross, just makes you a bit confused and it’s simply because you personally, don’t think the way the artist does.

Meanwhile, Tumblr’s idea of cringe is more typical: “I draw gay fat furries lol I’m kind of a freak” that is still basic compared to what DA has.

I think another factor is that Tumblr gets political at times and we’ve all seen how Tumblr stuff overlaps with politics, to the point certain concepts nowadays could be traced to Tumblr.

(I also see it as people going “I’m an adult I talk about big topics like politics, see”?).

A specific example I think of is when people treat furries as inherently LGBT: I sometimes feel like they do this because it’s the one way they don’t call furries “cringe, lame” and if they still wanted to mock furries but in a different context: It’d be “racist furries would rather fuck animals than admit someone with a different skin color can be pretty”.

Maybe another factor is the age range because DA probably has a lot of kids which is why the stuff in general is weird.

While Tumblr is mostly older Millenials.