Irony, is that what you really want?

From The Irony Human Centipede by Freddie deBoer.  Discussing a condition apparently prevalent in academia, journalism and the Acela Corridor - self-destructive irony.

He starts with someone else's tweet.

Apparently, many are responding to the tweet mockingly with their own ridiculous versions such as.  

Went down to the ol’ saloon, saw four roughnecks in cowboy hats talking about how that Fauci had some good points after all. Then I went home to the refinery, man said son if it was up to me we’d all be wearing N95s. pic.twitter.com/HYIQxPnAu9

— Richard Hanania (@RichardHanania) December 23, 2021

De Boer - 

There’s been a lot of this sort of parodying of Carl Beijer’s tweet, so I don’t mean to pick on Hanania specifically. But knowing Beijer’s style, the original tweet is almost certainly ironic itself, and so people are insincerely mimicking that which was insincere mimicry in the first place.

Where is all this irony getting us?  To me it is a signal and noise issue.  The more irony, the more the signal is being masked.  The more the signal is masked, the greater the uncertainty.  The greater the uncertainty, the more cautious and hesitant everyone becomes.

Irony has its role.  An ironic recapitulation of your central point can be a cruel reminder when your point is too esoteric or too isolated from broader reality.  

But irony can only work well when everyone is working off a common and shared base of knowledge and  culture.  Without that shared culture and knowledge, it comes across as either nonsense or a mechanism of othering and disparaging the non-insiders.

And it potentially leaves others, even those within your bubble, confused as to what you are actually trying to communicate.  Carl Beijer (a journalist) is making ironical fun of sophisticates who claim facts that seem untrue.  Everyone mistakes his irony and offers their own even more exaggerated version such as Hanania.  And the circle of confusion spirals.

De Boer heads in a slightly different direction.

Those may be problems, but they aren’t my problem here. My problem is that I don’t know what the absolute fuck anyone is saying anymore because they are so terrified of just saying “I feel this, and it matters to me.”

I know, I know, I know: it’s a defense mechanism, it’s a coping mechanism, capitalism killed all my hopes so I’m entitled to this, I hate my dad, yeah yeah yeah. You certainly are entitled to live this way. The question, my friend, is whether you actually want to live this way. How’s that coping mechanism going for you, hmmm? You coping pretty good? Posting Simpsons memes really defending you against the drudgery and injustice of a broken world? I’m guessing not! How many times a day do you have to evince derision without directly stating it to be impregnable? It seems exhausting. And how fucking old are people going to get, exactly, before they decide it’s beneath their dignity to live their entire lives in sneer quotes? You have people drifting towards their 50s who get up every day and find a target to “dunk” on. Are you gonna be in the old folks home, squinting through your bifocals, saying “I’m going to corncob someone today!” My advice is to develop an escape plan. I don’t know why people take that so personally, especially given that their entire personas are built on the premise that they take nothing personally. I mean I can’t be hurting any feelings, right? You don’t have feelings. I know, your Instagram told me.

I have known many, many people in my life who live behind the mask of irony all day, every day. I have never known one of them to be a happy person. Make of that what you will.

Irony is fine, when wielded with expertise by someone knowing their audience.  The problem is that we have a lot of journalists more credentialed than expert at their craft.  When you want to communicate facts and truth, irony gets in the way.  But if you are wanting to communicate status or tribal affiliation, signaling your condition as an insider and a disparager of the outsiders, irony can be an excellent means of doing so.  But as de Boer asks, is that what you really want?