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Isn't It Ironic?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the don't-you-think dept.

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."

4 of 683 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Oh the humanity....... by Cliffy03 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    OK, is this ironic? My uncle quit stock car racing because my aunt was worried to much about him. So he decided to be a track announcer, and during the first race a car lost control and hit the tower. He broke his leg.

    --
    In Soviet Russia, Nigel makes plans for you!
  2. Oh my god... by greppling · · Score: 4, Interesting
    I wanted to moderate on this topic, but sorry, there were hardly any posts worth moderating... Why can't we once in a while have an interesting non-tech article here without getting hundreds of comments that do nothing but expressing their boredom?

    If you think the story is crap, you are free to move on. But this being a discussion forum, and "Isn't it ironic..." being on of its favourite phrases, why shouldn't some of us be interested in reflecting the original (yeah, avoiding "correct" here...) usage of this term, and how it is most commonly used instead these days. After all, with some sensitivity for language subtilities you can be much wittier, impress girls, most important get more slashdot karma... (If you don't believe me, try making jokes in any than your first language -- I had to learn this the hard way when I first came to an English speaking country.)

    1. Re:Oh my god... by Shamashmuddamiq · · Score: 4, Interesting
      This kind of thing is quite common in many languages. Words or phrases are generalized in many cases to a point where they no longer describe the same specific concept or require the narrow context previously required.

      I remember reading a rant by C.S. Lewis describing this very thing. He was saddened by the way that the word "gentleman" had, over the years, been generalized to mean practically any human male. Previously, it had mostly been used to describe a certain segment of wealthy landowners. Lewis implied that this kind of thing was unfortunate, because there no longer remained in the English language a single word to describe a "wealthy landowner" in the way that "gentleman" used to. But there were already plenty of words to describe a "human male".

      Take the word "artist" as another example. Certianly, people 50 years ago would have just laughed in your face if you called someone like Britney Spears an "artist". We already had a proper word (or phrase) for describing her kind: "(amateur) musician". "Artist" had a much narrower and more prestigious implication. Now it's used for anyone who can strum a chord on a guitar or melt wax.

      --
      ...just my 2 gil.
  3. So, is this at all ironic? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    About 300 "dot com" companies, which are mostly famous these days for losing tremendous amounts of money, have agreed to pay $1 Billion to settle a lawsuit claiming that they inflated their IPO prices.

    I guess it's really sad, rather than ironic.

    Of Slashdot won't post a story on this settlement, either because (1) it's not news for nerds [and a Guardian story about irony is??], or (2) one of the dot-coms is VA Software.