 | | The trucker hat is one of the many trademarks of the ironist. |
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September 11, 2001. A day that is said to be a monumental turning point for America and the world at large. A moment that many say ushered in a new chapter in the drama of humanity. An incident that for some will forever live in infamy, alongside Pearl Harbor and the cancellation of Pee-Wee’s Playhouse.
Mere hours after this tragic and surreal event, some rather myopic people who fancied themselves prophetic visionaries, dramatically proclaimed this new age “the end of irony.” I suppose it’s a testament to the magnitude of this crime against humanity that these supposedly intelligent people
actually believed that a single event— albeit one of a caliber previously never experienced by this side of the
sphere—could annihilate centuries of ego-stroking and self-absorption on the part of Western society.
Had irony truly died, it would have been the most welcome change to our society since the death of disco. But not two weeks after this landmark event that was supposedly going to change the course of humanity evermore, we were back at it again, donning our
fashionably ragtag cabbie hats and cotton hoodies, lining up to buy Strokes albums from Tower Records.
Now, some people may read my caustic words and label me a humorless firebrand, unable to appreciate good ol’ irony,
the ubiquitous warhorse of modern comedy, the wrought iron tool that separates the ordinary man from the uberhip. Well, nuts
to that. Not only is irony a useless, destructive force, my research suggests that 90% of people who fall under the irony
umbrella don’t even understand the most basic premises of the concept, or even the reasons for their devotion to it.
Hey Kids! Get Noticed with Irony® Brand Social Behavior Modification!!
 | | Just because Guns N'Roses seems campy in retrospect doesn't mean you like them "ironically" when you listen to them. |
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It took me several years of grappling with the phenomenon of hipster irony to figure out why I had always found it so
irritating. Then, as I was staring at this monitor recently, I suddenly stumbled onto the answer, which now seems to me
somewhat profound: Ironic appreciation cannot exist outside of a social setting.
The entire foundation of ironic appreciation rests on the principle of being seen enjoying that which
has been shunned or rejected by one’s social environment. Many ironists misapply the irony label to the love of
any object that either deliberately or unintentionally extrudes certain qualities such as camp or outdated histrionics, but
there’s no reason to consider that relationship ironic; If you listen to Guns N’Roses at home when no
one’s around, it’s not really irony; you obviously just like Guns N’Roses. Just because it’s
widely considered passé or silly and you still listen to it doesn’t make your appreciation an ironic one; irony,
by definition, is dependent on the transpiration of the unexpected. In the absence of others, there is no outside social
contingent to define the unexpected or acknowledge the sociological context of one’s relationship to an object. Without
this, ironic appreciation, by definition, cannot exist.1 Ironic appreciation is when
you only “like” Guns N’Roses when other people are around, or you feel an overwhelming urge to
pretend to like it for reasons other than to conform to a [positive] popular opinion. So let us follow a logical trajectory
here; if one’s behavior modifies itself as a result of the human environment, then the behavior must necessarily be
classified as a function of the social mind. According to mainstream psychological theory, all social actions are performed
with the intention of having some benefit mirrored back to the doer.2 In other words,
the actions performed are simply calls awaiting socially-produced responses. In this case, a subject’s
“ironic” disposition is the result of an attention seeking mind.
Irony is, in essence, a method for individuals to validate their presence in social scenarios by exploiting behavior that
deliberately tries to elevate its user above a certain threshold of hipness by way of ridicule, and/or subverting the
boundaries of accepted or mainstream opinion on a subject, and thereby garnering desired attention. To dumb it down another notch,
it’s a convenient tool for simpering punks with Chuck Taylors and trucker hats to feel clever and get noticed. And it
is this ridiculous attitude that I must destroy.
Though there’s no infallible physical sign to signal it, it’s a lot like what Supreme Court Justice Potter
Stewart said about pornography: you know it when you see it. It may come to your attention in the form of individuals wearing
overpriced secondhand mechanics’ clothes or expensive novelty T-shirts with Spam labels emblazoned on them. Or perhaps
it will find you via people who go on and on about how old He-Man cartoons are really badass, and how all Bruce
Campbell movies are really fucking cool.3 The crucial element is typically the
presence of an obnoxious guy or girl who is doing everything in his/her ability to forcibly consolidate every particle of
diffuse attention into one small area: their person.
A Rebuttal to Irony Televison
Several years ago, out of an intense curiosity to relive my past, I went out of my way to procure and watch the cartoons
of my childhood. Despite the fact that cartoons like Transformers, G.I. Joe, and Voltron are often the altar of
worship for the most fervent ironists, my independent assessment drew three conclusions: 1) ironic appreciation for this
stuff is largely based on nostalgia, not “irony.” Probably about 50-60% of the “ironists” fit here.
2) That which is not based on nostalgia is based on a perceived sense of irony and resulting hilarity stemming not from
the content of the material but on the fact that the ironist’s age (~18-30 years) is out of the age range of the
program’s intended demographic (~3-10 years). This probably represents 20-30%. 3) Those who do not fall into the first
two categories actually like the cartoons. I would estimate that no more than 5-10% fit into this group. Many people who belong in this category use the irony defense to validate their opinions, but the likely explanation for their behavior is fear which happens to be cloaked in a cocoon of forced flamboyant irony. You see, some people are embarrassed about liking something that others may not, and personal insecurity can sometimes push those people to disclaim their connection with the object they perceive as causing the conflict. As a result, they act like they have an ironic connection to, say, the Goonies, when the reality would suggest they just like the movie on its own terms. In their minds, no one could have respect for
someone who professes to like such a shitty movie on a strictly theatrical level, so they pull out the irony card.
Anyway, the results of my experiment found, half-shockingly, that ninety-five percent of these cartoons fed to me during
my childhood don’t make a bit of sense to anyone with functioning reasoning skills or basic neurological faculties (I
cross-checked my results with middle-of-the-road objective persons with no particular leaning one way or the other on the
irony issue, who were also able to keep a level head about the fact that we were watching old cartoons). We must remember
that these shows were made for very young children who have intellects that have not fully developed. While these cartoons
may have been awesome in 1985, when I was 6 years old, the original Transformers series now makes about as much sense
as a naked Ross Perot, drunk and on acid, railing about his economic theories, running through a touchless car wash handing
out Pez dispensers. It features inexplicable plot holes, a complete lack of character depth, completely irrational and enigmatic behavior on
the part of main characters, thoroughly unengaging events that follow rote formula to the ‘T’ episode after
torturous episode; it simply isn’t quality television. And of all people, it should bother me to say
that, because I was a die-hard Transformers fan for many years. It’s just that now I realize that the show was
crap and I only liked it because I wasn’t old enough to know better. Time and maturity gives you the perspective to
have that objectivity, you see.
But these irony fuckers are either liars or they’re just in denial. They like to use phrases like “Transformers kick ass!” and “Voltron is fuckin’ cool!”, all the while denying that their
love, if it exists in reality, is likely based on nostalgia or a desperate need for attention.
(A Brief Digression on the Transformers Series)
 | | The Transformers television series was an advertisement, but some people were unable to understand this. |
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Oh, and lest we forget or attempt to kid ourselves otherwise: Transformers was a fucking commercial for flimsy
little plastic toys that came from Japan. Transformers: The Movie was an 84 minute marketing scheme that may have
caused an entire generation of children unspeakable psychological damage because ad execs thought a feature-length movie
would be a clever venue in which they could massacre nearly every Transformer character in a robotic holocaust in the
hopes that American youth would ecstatically throw their fists in the air and run out and buy a new line of overpriced toys
to take the place of the slaughtered ones that they’d actually become close to for the past several years. As I recall,
everyone my age was absolutely aghast after watching it.
The lesson this taught me was that events that may have been meaningful to me may have meant absolutely nothing to someone
else. In this case, the robots that were at one time an integral part of my childhood, not as toys, but as spiritual
entities, were likely cooked up in some corporate boardroom as a part of some mass-marketing ploy, ready to be decimated at
any convenient time, at the whim of some suit-and-tie jerkoff who was more interested in number counting than producing
something worthwhile for kids to enjoy. How’s that for irony? Now tell me about how cool the Transformers are.
There is a Season, Turn, Turn, Turn
Anyway, before I got carried away with uncontrollable rage, my point was that a child familiar with this kind of stuff at
a young age might very well like it, but the same person introduced to the show for the first time as a young adult would
probably think it was awful. But before I go too far, let me just say that sure, 20 years later, I can appreciate stuff for
its nostalgia value because I, like everyone else, used to watch it when I was a kid. But it’s just been my observation
that the hardest of the die-hards do not seem to be attached to these programs for any sentimental reasons. They’re the
kind of people who want everyone to know that they’re into it in an ironic way, YEAH DUDE!
 | | Country music artist Aaron Tippin may look funny, but does listening to his music count as irony? |
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Irony or Just Funny Because it’s Shit?
As he was cleaning out his hard drive recently, my roommate Kyle discovered an MP3 by pop-country music artist Aaron
Tippin. Presumably, this particular MP3 was detritus from Kyle’s former place of residence, where his irony-obsessed
roommate would periodically download tracks using Kyle’s computer. The song sat, out of place, amongst millions of little electronic bits of information arranged in such a way as to represent really bad Joy Division and Smiths songs, in a folder of what Kyle offhandedly described as “Josh’s irony shit.” The track in question was a song entitled “Working Man’s Ph.D, ” which opens with this dubious set of couplets:
You get up every morning 'fore the sun comes up
Toss a lunchbox into a pickup truck
A long, hard day sure ain't much fun
But you've gotta get it started if you wanna get it done
You set your mind and roll up your sleeves
You're workin' on a working man's Ph.D
Kyle’s finger struck down with rueful
permanence on the delete key as we cackled with mean-spirited glee at the song we had just heard. To our thinking, the lyrics
exemplified all too perfectly the archetypal “redneck” world view, complete with lines about pickup trucks,
sweaty blue collar manual labor, and of course, the unquestioned rejection of anything but straight shooting luddite living.
It was funny, sure, but certainly nothing I’d listen to by my own free will, on my own time, when I had access to other
music—and I seriously doubt Josh would either; in isolation from peers, the humor value is pretty much non-existent
after one spin. Even on that one listen, I wouldn’t qualify my own amusement in the song as ironic appreciation either;
first of all, I didn’t like the song, and wasn’t pretending to, and secondly, amusement does not equal
appreciation. I laugh at all kinds of things I don’t like. Furthermore, irony depends on the
unexpected; irony
would have been if I really liked the song— and no one would have guessed that would ever happen.
Def Leppard? Ha! Hair Metal Sucks, Dude. Now, the Darkness—That’s Where it’s At!
 | | The Darkness is fine because "they're ironic." Andrew W.K. sucks because he "means it." |
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Another trend that I have observed is the ironist’s rather annoying policy of attaching himself only to self-consciously ironic things, where he openly shuns that which is of the same aesthetic, but done in sincerity. For example, I came across a guy not too long ago who seemed to me incredibly proud of his haughty persona of forced irony. Half of his actions were smug, egotistical statements of shameless self-aggrandizement mixed with loud showy dialogue relating to his vociferously ironic personal tastes, the noxious combination of which was released into the atmosphere with the desperate attempt at producing some sort of attention-grabbing spectacle (the other half of his actions were simply overt cries for attention). One day, he was loudly proclaiming his love of the Darkness, a modern rock band whose self-consciously ironic musical aesthetic is forged almost entirely in the image of rock’s campiest heroes, like Queen and Def Leppard. Now, another rock star, a man who goes by the name of Andrew W.K. also borrows his shtick from some of the same figures and has a similarly over-the-top, and perceivably cheeky stage presence, but rather interestingly, he seems completely detached from a deliberate sense of camp despite his obviously dated sound. I asked my ironist interlocutor, who I’ll called “Johnny” (party because this pejorative term passes for a legitimate moniker but mostly because its colloquial meaning accurately describes him), if he happened to be an Andrew W.K. fan. He recoiled in disgust. According to him, the Darkness rocks because they’re “ironic,” but Andrew W.K. is not because he “means it.” I mentioned that, well, I sort of liked Andrew W.K. (in a non-ironic way).
It was then that Johnny’s pasty white face morphed from an affected sneer into a mutating expression of first shock and then straight-faced condescension. Horrified, he informed me with grave matter-of-factness that my opinion was “not cool.” I shrugged and explained that I appreciated Andrew W.K. in a way that I couldn’t appreciate the Darkness because AWK is sincere. Johnny walked off, scoffing that “that makes it even worse!”
Oh.
What difference does it make if Andrew W.K. is “serious” and the Darkness isn’t? Would Johnny have been an Andrew W.K. fan if AWK was openly ironic? If not, why not? It would probably sound roughly the same regardless of the intent. The difference would only exist in a perceptual sense.
The Aggressive Ironist
And when it comes down to the crux of the issue, irony is a perfect example of one of the Western world’s biggest flaws: style over substance; image over reality. But that’s a value system; it can’t really be fairly dismissed because it depends on a subjective vision of “how things should be.” I disagree with it in principle, but the reason irony gets to me is because of the rampant aggression with which ironists wield it. I don’t mind that they harbor these values, but it’s grating that many of these individuals flaunt themselves at every opportunity. And nobody likes a flaunter of anything. Sometimes these people go so far as to get on high horses or place themselves on irony pedestals. Case in point, Johnny. Johnny could have simply professed his love for the Darkness without attempting to invalidate my feelings for AWK. But the overwhelming desire to rep what he believed was the one legitimate point of view on life seized his tongue, and transformed him into a bona-fide prick.
Now, some of you reading this may accuse me of hypocrisy for even writing this. After all, I am now guilty of writing propaganda trying to buttress my personal value system and invalidate another. This is at least partially true. However, I do not go out of my way to mock and ridicule the ironists out there; it’s just that the bulk of ironists are so goddamn oppressive and keen to throw out “stick-up-your-ass” comments about non-ironists that I end up feeling I need to defend us by lashing out at them for their narrow-mindedness, personal insecurity, and their dismissive Gestapo tactics.
Of course, my general outward tolerance for opposing viewpoints does not change my inward opinion about irony. As a rule, irony seems remarkably worthless for a concept that has so thoroughly permeated our way of life here. And that’s fine; not everything necessarily has to have some sort of overarching meaning or significance, but if someone’s going produce some kind of principled conviction in its worshippers to the extent that it’s going to result in divisive behavior and bad blood, it goddamn better have some productive purpose in the long haul. And it doesn’t. So the next time the U.S. is hit with a major terrorist attack, IT’S THE END OF IRONY, OKAY?
Does irony really have a legitimate purpose? Write Rahul and prove him wrong!.
Footnotes
1. Obviously ironic situations and other examples of irony can exist sans groups of people, but in this case,
I refer to irony in the sense of “liking stuff that everyone thinks sucks, but only liking it because everyone thinks
it sucks,” or being overly flamboyant about one's "affection."
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2. Except, I would add, actions those conducted by egoless beings such as yogis, Jesuses, and other enlightened beings.
Some might argue that volunteer work and other socially beneficial efforts are discounted too, but many psychologists and
social scientists dispute this, stating that feeling good for helping, avoiding guilt, feeling a needing to abide one’s
humanitarian duties, and other such catalysts are in reality the impetus for such behavior, not true, selfless concern for
others. The proof comes, they say, in the volunteer’s attachment to positive emotions stemming from his actions.
Obviously, some will heartily debate this, but I believe, without cynicism, that it reflects the reality of human mentality,
born from the necessities of evolution. A serious discussion of this matter goes beyond the scope of this small diatribe, but
it is certainly not difficult to find further debate on this matter.
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3. Incidentally, could there be anything less ironic and clever in this point in time than another goddamn Elvis impersonator?
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