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."

Comments

South Park episode display classic irony

[spun]

In a recent South Park episode, Matt and Trey had the town under siege by greedy corporate Native Americans, intent on paving it over to make a highway from denver to their casino. The town won't sell out, so the Native American resort to rubbing blankets on SARS infected Chinese people and giving them to the townsfolk. One of the kids goes on a 'spirit-journey' using his culture's native vision-drug, huffing paint thinner, and he finds out that the cure for SARS is his culture's traditional medicine of Campbell's Chicken Soup, Nyquil, and Ginger Ale. The Chief's son also contracts SARS. The townsfolk give him the cure, and the chief gratefully gives them their town back.

Irony, as I understand it, is deliberatly saying the opposite of what you mean. No one really thinks Matt and Trey are trying to say that Native Americans are greedy soulless corporate scum.

Speed

[gazuga]

Just looking at the definitions, the confusion is understandable - in the first instance, rhetorical irony expands to cover any disjunction at all between language and meaning, with a couple of key exceptions (allegory also entails a disconnection between sign and meaning, but obviously isn't synonymous with irony; and lying, clearly, leaves that gap, but relies for its efficacy on an ignorant audience, where irony relies on a knowing one).

Anyone else feel like the writer was on speed or something? Break that sentence up man, my head is spinning.

how extraordinary

[n3k5]

From the article:

With emails, people with a lot of time on their hands can, obviously, give themselves room to develop an ironic theme, but for people with jobs, e-etiquette demands instant response, which brings you down to the very rudiments of irony - I Love My Boss; I'm Delighted That My Ex Is Going Out With That Attractive Woman; I Really Couldn't Be More Pleased That You've Lost a Stone.

I don't want to object that these aren't fine examples of rudimentary irony, but one could argue that they are mainly sarcastic. Zoe Williams laments that irony is often mixed up with hypocrisy, cynicism, laziness, and coincidence, but completely fails to mention sarcasm. Maybe this isn't a severe omission in the context of this article, because many more sarcastic statements actually show features of irony as there are ironic statements you could consider sarcastic.

Re:how extraordinary

[mooman]

I too found it interesting that not once in the article did the author mention sarcasm (at least not by name). He contrasted irony to about half a dozen oft-mistaken concepts, but never differentiated or likened irony to sarcasm. Most strange. If I had to differentiate the two I would say that sarcasm is intentional irony, whereas irony more often manifests itself naturally.

Therefore the references he made to sources like the Onion would probably more likely qualify as sarcasm (and strictly for the sake of humor; I disagree with the comment that sarcarm is only nominally for hurtful situations) and not irony. Irony would be if the Onion ran some tongue-in-cheek article about Gates and then the next week, Gates actually did something close to what they described...

Thus their comments were "sarcasm",
Gates actually doing so would be "irony",
and while "coincidental", it would also fall under the umbrella of irony. Plain coincidence would be if Cnet said that Gates should do something, and then he happened to do it.. Nothing ironic there. But when the Onion publishes a farsical untruth, which then comes to fruition, *that* would be irony.

Oh look, a dead horse... now where's my bat...?

That's why English is a "living" language.

[suso]

Not that I agree that the definition of irony should be changed. But English is still a living language, which means that the definition and scope of words will change. So perhaps someday in the dictionary under the entry for irony or ironic, it will include what people commonly mean it to be.

Re:Words change in meaning over time

[Titusdot Groan]

The problem we are facing is convergence; multiple words meaning the same thing and losing their old meaning. This is a problem in that we no longer have a word attached to the old concept.

This is analogous to 1984 where the language was slowly restricted to eliminate concepts and hence control thought -- which is double plus ungood as it is hard to form complex thought if your vocabulary is limited.

For instance, if we allow irony to come to mean coincidence or poetic tragedy then what word do we use when we really mean ironic?

Ah, some freshmeat at slashdot!

[Travoltus]

This issue of irony has been a big thing with me for a long time.

I was reading "Age of Irony" by Jedediah Purdy at http://www.prospect.org/print/V9/39/purdy-j.html and it all seemed to gel at last.

I have never understood why I really hated that term "don't take yourself too seriously." Well, at least now, I can study the true depths of its meaning, so as to form a counter argument.

First, what they mean, is now clear: among those who take themselves seriously, exists a large subset of people who are pompous, self-righteous, and at the worst extreme, people who are given to justiy the worst atrocities in the name of an ideology or religion.

But now, let's look at this (from Jedediah Purdy's essay):

All of this suggests that the wish to escape irony is probably mistaken--but that the hope of enriching it is not. Just as we cannot live in the flatness of irony, we cannot breathe the cloying air of anti-irony.

My argument is, that 'irony', or more specifically, people who religiously take nothing seriously, have mired this society in utter apathy.

To accurately and concisely describe the state of affairs we are in now, I will offer two quotes (one I got clarified right here at slashdot):

"[populus Romanus] qui dabat olim imperium, fasces, legiones, omnia, nunc se continet atque duas tantum res anxius optat, PANEM ET CIRCENSES"
"The people who had once bestowed commands, consulships, legions, and all else now longs eagerly for just two things,bread and circus games." - Juvenal

"A full belly and a diverting show makes a bad revolutionary. Television is the opiate of the people. Long may it be so." -Ned Grossberg, Max Headroom

I would add the quote "Those that stand for nothing, fall for anything" (author yet unknown to me), but the "irony" generation does profess to stand for something. What it is, Providence only knows. Let us look at this, shall we?
Ironic thinkers - those who eschew seriousness and approach life with jokes, pokes, and the 'laid back approach' - accuse their opposites of being intolerant, self-righteous hypocrites. But these same modern 'ironic' thinkers are the ones who brought us
Intolerance, hate, and the politics of division:

Fat bashing

Geek bashing

Religion bashing

Male bashing

Self-Righteousness:

"Get Over It" as the cure-all mantra for all manner of life traumas (abuse, molestation, etc.). What the 'ironic' thinkers forget, in this, is that everyone has issues - the profound lack of social support systems in modern society is as equally the fault of apathetic "I don't have time to listen to this, so get me my beer or get lost!" as it is the fault of Christian Repressionist "You must have demons inside you, let us drill a hole in your head to make it go away" ignorance.
To note: the 'irony' crowd tends to have a profound and sometimes verbally and physically violent reaction towards people in emotional distress. The irony of this is these same people then have nowhere to turn when they themselves are depressed or feel their life is in a rut. It is not uncommon that recreational drugs are then used to provide counsel.

Hypocrisy:

SUV owning activists gathering at Starbuck's to drive out to the "No War For Oil!" protest

I can discuss a multitude of other examples here, but I won't get into it.

Ultimately, apathy, the child of ironic thinking, is why we are seeing all of our rights being taken away by the RIAA and MPAA, etc. Apathy and the refusal to be serious about things, is why our politicians and corporations continue to practically dick we the people over with impugnity.

A populace that was more serious and less apathetic, would never allow such things to transpire for so long.

Of course, a really serious, and politically active populace, might be predisposed to frequent revolts, or to

Oh knock it off will you!

[tjstork]

Native Americans were as much as warmongers as Europeans were, just less technologically advanced. Remember, they wanted to buy guns, they wanted the horses, and the whole tribal system was basically a male centered warrior cult mythology. If the Native Americans had invented calculus and sailing vessels first, they would have been spreading smallpox in Europe.

Self-important Brits?

[djkitsch]

Us "self-important" Brits (yes, all 65 million of us) tend to get slightly pissed off with the condescending way Americans (or some of them) assume that the entire population of the UK have either upper-class or Cockney accents and look down our noses at Americans!

Some of us are in fact well aware that a good deal of Americans (especially sitcom writers) are well-versed in irony, some a lot better than us (have you *seen* our hospital dramas? ER versus Casualty is really no debate).

The thing to be pointed out here is that self-importance on the part of a few Brits AND Americans is what started this "Irony Is Dead" thing in the first place. Sweeping statements never do anyone any good credibility-wise...

An ever worse word...

[evilviper]

The single most misused word I have come across is "literally"...

For instance: "His performance was so great! It literally blew me away."

Unless "he" was performing an imitation of a hurricane, the above use of "literally" is blatantly incorrect. Unfortuanately, all too often, "literally" is being used intechangeably with "really" and "absolutely", which is a real problem.

If fear it won't be long before "literally" is meaningless, and you won't have any way to telling someone you are not speaking figuratively.