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Vol. IX · Issue 41 · About the Publication

A magazine for the moments we never wanted to live — and can't stop retelling.

Most Embarrassing Moment is a Brooklyn-based editorial publication that has spent nine years collecting, curating, and celebrating the small human disasters the internet loves to confess. We are not a forum. We are a newsroom with a Cringe Score.

Confess Your Moment Read this week's Top 10
  • 2.1M monthly readers
  • 41,000+ verified submissions
  • 9 yrs · zero doxxing incidents
A Brooklyn editorial desk with notebooks, coffee, and zines — the newsroom's daily mise-en-scène.
Cringe Score 92/100 "I waved back at someone waving at the person behind me — on a first date."

The Origin Story

From a Brooklyn apartment to a 2.1-million-reader monthly publication.

2015. A futon. A comedy writer with a stack of bar napkins.

Devon Albright quit a late-night staff writing gig in 2015 to start a tiny newsletter called Most Embarrassing Moment. The premise was embarrassingly simple: people love confessing, the internet loves ranking, and almost nobody was doing both with any editorial care.

The first issue went out to 47 subscribers. Three years later the publication was Webby-honoree adjacent, and by 2021 it landed in The New York Times' "Tech We're Obsessed With" column. Today the team is eleven full-timers and a bench of six rotating freelance moderators — all working from a fourth-floor walkup at 224 W 18th Street.

— Devon Albright, Founder & Editorial Director

The Methodology

How the Cringe Score works — the four inputs that decide which mortification rises to the top.

Every story on the site carries a Cringe Score between 0 and 100. It's the single number that decides what appears in the weekly Top 10 — and it's not just upvotes. Here's exactly how the algorithm weighs a confession.

  1. 01

    Upvotes · 35%

    The community's raw signal. We weight verified accounts more heavily than throwaway browsers to dampen brigading, and we strip any votes that arrive inside coordinated 10-minute bursts.

    Logged per IP-fingerprint + device hash.

  2. 02

    Dwell Time · 30%

    How long readers stay on the story before bouncing. We treat anything under 6 seconds as a polite scroll-past; anything over 90 seconds as the silent wincing that confirms genuine cringe.

    Median dwell on Top 10 stories: 4m 11s.

  3. 03

    Emoji Reactions · 20%

    Five-reaction palette (😬 😅 🤦 💀 🥲). The most-weighted reaction is the silent-wince 😬 — readers who pick it over 💀 are telling us the story landed close to home. Audio submissions get 12% extra weight for production quality.

    6.8M lifetime story votes cast.

  4. 04

    Editorial Adjustment · 15%

    A small human override. The editorial desk can nudge a story up or down by ±8 points for nuance — protecting confessors from pile-ons, surfacing quieter stories that don't perform well in week one, and pruning anything that crosses into cruelty.

    Reviewed every Tuesday at 11am ET.

The Standing Pledge

"Your story leaves this building without your name, your email, or a single paper trail. That has been true for every one of the 41,000+ confessions published since 2015, and it will be true for the next 41,000."

— The Most Embarrassing Moment Editorial Desk, Brooklyn, NY
  • 0real names ever published
  • 0email leaks in 9 years
  • 0doxxing incidents on record
  • 100%anonymous-by-default

Press & Awards

Where you've seen us.

The outlets that have featured the publication, and the badge we keep on the wall.

A 2023 Webby Award Honoree — Humor (Community category).

Recognized by the International Academy of Digital Arts & Sciences for a publication that "makes the internet a kinder, funnier, and more human place." Syndicated weekly to 38 partner newsletters reaching 4.2 million inboxes.

Embarrassment Storytelling Festival, Austin TX — October 2023, sponsored by Most Embarrassing Moment, Inc.

A Plain-Language Note

Embarrassment is funny here. It isn't medicine.

Most Embarrassing Moment is a humor and storytelling publication. Confessing, reading, and voting can feel cathartic — and the community is genuinely warm — but it is not a substitute for professional mental-health support. If your embarrassment has become shame you can't shake, or if a story on this site has surfaced something heavier than expected, please reach out to someone trained to help.

In the United States

988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline — call or text 988, available 24/7.

Crisis Text Line — text HOME to 741741.

In the UK & ROI

Samaritans — call 116 123, free, any time.

NHS 111 — for non-emergency mental-health guidance.

If you're not sure where to start

Tell one person — a friend, a family member, a GP, a coworker. Shame loses most of its power the moment it's spoken out loud to someone who can answer.

We are storytellers. We are not clinicians. Take care of the people behind the stories — including yours.

Ready to share yours?

Anonymous. Two-minute form. Edited only for length and cruelty.

Confess Your Moment Or read the archive first →