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It's related to nerd culture which has always been viewed as strange. And then add to the fact it's mostly associated with women and/or young and/or queer creators and is associated with self-inserts and hypersexualization and bad, wishfulfillment writing...then it becomes even more cringe...for some reason.
So, to an outsider, there only experience with fanfiction is extreme examples of the four fanfic tropes above, then you can see why people would be associated with cringe.
And 50 Shades and My Immortal has all of those tropes, so it's a form of confirmation bias.
And yeah, fanfic is kinda cringe by societal norm standards but so is being obsessed with finding out what lyrics mean to the point entire websites exist to uncovering that. So is standing outside of a theater or game store in a line in cosplay so you can be one of the first buyers. So are video game nerds who dig out removed content in the source code of their favorite games and then talk about it in videos. So is spending hours recreating scenes from horror movies and putting them in your own haunted house for trick-or-treaters to go through. So is putting different outfits together that allude to Disney character outfits so you can wear it to Disneyland. So is making lore videos longer than most people's work shifts. So are the hundreds of videos dedicated to connecting films together because they have the same tree decoration in the background. And we could go on. Fandom is cringe but it's also fun and helps us connect with ourselves and other people. And to some extent, everyone participates in fandom at some point.
Cringe is not bad by itself. It's just a feeling of embarrassment or awkwardness that you feel for yourself or someone else and is meant to be a defense mechanism to fit into society because back in the caveman days, being weird or off-putting would mean getting kicked out and likely dying. We also get feelings of cringe when we see PDA or nudity or a child not understanding something and those things aren't bad.
But this also has to do with social norms that loop back to the stereotypes and tropes of fanfiction and who writes it. It's mostly associated with women and/or young and/or queer creators. Already three marganized groups in society. This adds to the degree of cringe.
Young people are often seen as too young to discuss issues and what they do and say is seen as lesser and unimportant due to this inexperience. Because fanfiction is associated with younger creators (or rather teenage girls obsessing over their favorite male characters as the main stereotype) fanfiction often gets brushed off as lesser writing.
Women are often seen in a similar light but rather than inexperience being the main reason, sexism is. Women writers in media are often seen as less creative and will often be accused of being self-absorbed, unable to take criticism, and less creative than men. As a result, they also get accused of self-inserting and wish fulfillment writing more than their male counterparts. And then add how fanfiction is often associated with hypersexualization. Ah. Now we start to see why women writing fanfic is seen as cringe. Women's sexual desires (or assumed sexual desires...keep in mind many women who write are often accused of self-inserting and wish fulfillment...and this is doublefold for sexual content...so even if she is writing a ship she has no sexual interest in, she will still get lumped in with this) And because fanfiction is associated with woman writers and hypersexualized writing, it is written off as silly and stupid and cringe...much like women writers in media often have this placed on them and their work.
And then of course being queer. I hopefully don't have to explain why homophobia and transphobia works like ageism and sexism do.
And yeah, not sure if this made much sense...but this is how I interpret it.