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Isn't It Ironic?
gessel writes "Have you ever used the word "ironic?" Do you know what it really means? If not, is that ironic? Was Seinfeld's "irony" really the cause of the utter collapse of civil society as we knew it? How ironic was it for the CEO of MTV to declare irony a victim of 9/11? The Guardian is running a brilliant article that clears the confusion around a culturally critical and chronically misused word."
I find it rather ironic that the Guardian is doing a story on irony... or do I?
:)
However, I don't find it ironic that Slashdot picked up that story...or don't it?
I dunno. I'm confused even more now.
My journal has hot
Keep in mind that it will not be ironic for you to post something that is not ironic, but claim that it is. That would just be moronic.
1400x1250 in a 640x480 world...
Here's the big irony for this article: somehow, someone felt that it belongs under a heading that includes the phrase "stuff that matters."
Sounds like Zoe Williams (the author of The Guardian article) is taking a line from Inigo Montoya:
"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
Headline:
"Slashdot, home of bad grammar and spelling, posts article about proper grammar. Rioting ensues."
Slashdot is discussing proper English usage.
Irony is when your ironing and listening to Alanis Morissette.
Edmund:Baldrick, have you no idea what irony is?
Baldrick:Yeah, it's like goldy and bronzy, only it's made of iron.
from Amy and Amiability
Yeah, but the would-be title "Doesn't it Suck?" doesn't work as well musically.
I found this article VERY interresting.
This song is ironic as a whole. It's a song about irony (implied by the title) but nothing in the song is ironic, that is ironic by itself.
This sets up a paradox though, if the song is ironic because none of the lyrics are ironic yet the title implies that they should be. Well then the title makes sense and is not ironic anymore. Go back to step one rinse and repeat ad infinitum.
Go Dagos.
All good points. Like you, I too am superior to all the morons who liked that song. It is not them who are avoiding me, but I who is avoiding them.
You are right, of course, that Alanis Morrisette is the biggest moron of them all. I'm beginning to believe that she is not worthy of me. She's so uncultured and illiterate that she hasn't answered even one of the 2,152 letters I've sent her in the last 3 years.
Slashdot is jumping the shark. I'm just driving the boat.
"That song always bothered me and I found this site really comforting that it bothered someone else enough to take the trouble to dissect it for everyone."
Isn't it ironic that your analysis was discredited by your taste in music?
Butthead: Umm, what's that word when you don't think something cool is going to happen and then it happens?
Stuart: Ironic?
Butthead: No dumbass, an English word.
Beavis: Umm,.. cool?
Butthead: Yeah. That was cool.
I remember a couple of years ago a comedian at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival disected the Alanis song Ironic ...
"'It's like rain on your wedding day' NO! That's only ironic if you're marrying a weatherman and he picked the date!"
He gave anything that is labelled ironic but blatently isn't, the title of Alanic.
That was enough for me to use the word more appropriately!
what "texting" really needs is a global slashdot-style qualifier, such as
+5, Serious
"I have shot Lorna."
a car representing a local collision repair business hit the back of a bus and completely wrecked the front end. My wife and I couldn't decide if it was an elaborate advertisement or just bone-headed driving. Nevertheless, it was pretty ironic.
A practitioner of gluttony is called a glutton; a practitioner of villainy is caled a villain; so by those criteria, God is an iron.
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
Every English-speaking, non-American learns shortly after birth that Americans don't understand irony. It's one of the things that makes US TV comedy in particular so ... um, "unintentionally funny" to the rest of us a lot of the time.
Of course, if you're reading this and you're American, no offence intended. After all, everyone knows you guys make the best TV shows.
Actually, Irony is where the Iranians come from.
Slashdot screencap
Actually, I think you'll find that he's the victim of a truck...
Yea... but you'd still fuck her.
Sarcasm isn't rhetorical irony? Merriam-Webster make it sound a lot like it. "...2a the use of words to express something other than and especially the opposite of the literal meaning" That doesn't sound like sarcasm at all, does it? That also fits with the first definition in the Guardian article.
Perhaps the distinction is making an argument, or trying to point out a truth, rather than just a cheap joke. Some intention or belief at the bottom of it that carries it from a joke to an actual argument.
To me, that's the interesting part of this discussion of irony. I think many of these misuses of the word are defensible, using one definition or the other, but the thing that I find troublesome is that so often this claim of irony is accompanied by a refusal to acknowledge any sincere belief.
Mocking everything isn't irony. I think the modern (arguably inaccurate) idea of irony, with its affectation of nihilism, is a really interesting starting point for a social discussion. People will brag about what they don't believe, but won't talk about what they do believe, or display art that they pretend that they would be ashamed to really enjoy.
I think the problem is that people don't know what they believe. They don't even know that they believe anything. The canned answers are inadequate, but they manage neither to rationalize and complete these for themselves, or to find other things to believe in. They believe incoherent and contradictory things, and pretend belief in nothing. Unfortunately, believing nothing is just as useless a way to go through life as believing everything.
There is an attack that is often made on skeptics. "Oh, you don't believe in anything." However, the skeptics I know have unusually strong beliefs, and understand that their beliefs have implications in the world they live in. That is what makes them skeptics.
In this vein, there was a great article in Spy magazine about a decade ago on "irony". It even had Chevy Chase grinning on the cover and making the quote symbol with his fingers. I'll have to dig that up again.
I think this quote expresses it beautifully:
Simpsons, Homerpalooza
Teen1: Oh, here comes that cannonball guy. He's cool.
Teen2: Are you being sarcastic, dude?
Teen1: I don't even know anymore.
Assembly is the reverse of disassembly.
Headline:
"PM4RK5, master of the inability to discern syntax from semantics, claims that an article about a word's definition is an article about grammar. Yawning ensues."
My favorite example is the phrase "literally and figuratively" (which is mostly used to mean "really, really, really"). A friend of mine who has a beef with the misuse of irony made the categorical statement that nothing was every literally and figuratively true, and we've had fun for years in pointing out the things that are -- mostly puns, of course.
-Esme
500 Slashdotters trying too hard.
Read below (or above) before modding down...
Ownyourphone.com. Custom ringtones, cheap and easy
Grammar Nazi's, eh? Well, let me know when there's a grammar D-day, I don't want to miss it. ;)
Americans cannot do 'irony' because they lack a language of their own. Another reason Americans lack irony, is they cannot win a war without the Brits. Irony is truth that hurts in a funny way.
Argentina