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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."
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.
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.
No, it's the way you screwed up your "your/you'res" in your post.
IMO, MTV killed "irony" long before 9/11/01 by overplaying a certain ill-informed Alanis Morisette video...
"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!
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!
Actually, Irony is where the Iranians come from.
Slashdot screencap
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.