Having principles you stuck to that are helpful to the world is never cringe, it's a display of feeling of inferiority when someone critiques you for having a virtue. They feel that their comfortable bed of lies is threatened when someone shows that it's not societaly acceptable to be a dick, while they lived their lives accepting that they may sometimes be allowed certain priviledges if they conform to the "norm". I hope one day we get the world to the place where virtues are rightly celebrated instead of being called cringe.