androidsixteen
@androidsixteen.eth
We are at absurdity ATHs as a society Best move in these circumstances imo is to short absurdity / irony and long earnestness Worst case outcome — your life is authentic and sincere
8 replies
10 recasts
91 reactions
Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
Absurdity perhaps Irony no That’s a very different thing and at an all time low
1 reply
0 recast
2 reactions
androidsixteen
@androidsixteen.eth
How is irony at ATLs? The tone of the internet is sarcastic
1 reply
0 recast
0 reaction
Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
Sarcasm is not irony
1 reply
0 recast
0 reaction
androidsixteen
@androidsixteen.eth
Ok but why is irony at ATLs?
1 reply
0 recast
0 reaction
Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
People have been hating on it and counterprogramming it for 30 years and it has mostly worked. Started around time of David Foster Wallace essay E Unibas Pluram. Irony peaked in the late 80s/early 90s. Sincerity of various flavors, mostly right-coded has been steadily on the rise since then. Now it’s a core element of politicized aesthetics like trad, metamodernism, NRx etc, as well as some left leaning ones. People started blaming irony for the meaning crisis around the time of the GFC. The brief hipster era then (Portlandia, drinking PBR ironically) was the last gasp of irony as a broad cultural attitude. Now at most, it’s a mannered style in specific scenes, like kayfabe in wrestling. It is important to distinguish irony from cynicism, sarcasm etc. Unlike those, irony is a philosophical posture beyond just a rhetorical tactic. That philosophy (postmodernism) has been relentlessly under siege for decades now. Even internally. The Marxist takeover of pomo is essentially about taking out the irony.
1 reply
1 recast
1 reaction