i'm a twentysomething earning my stripes (and degree) in graphic design.
from texas, to new york city, back to texas. this is my personal blog.
“the rise of the ironic class”
excerpted from may/june 09 issue of relevant magazine.
“At its core, irony is a way of working through absurdity - in the world, and in ourselves. It’s a method of channeling cynicism and lampooning (or guardedly hoping for) the sort of naive idealism that believes things can get better. And it’s a communal activity - a sort of “group therapy” where we can bond with others who are similarly numbed and strangely entranced by the weirdness of the world. It’s this need for generational solidarity that has made irony into a veritable industry in recent years, spawning cynical superstars like Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, and The Onion, as well as boatloads of snarky talking heads on VH1, E! and Comedy Central.
What does irony do to our interpersonal relationships? Does constantly being ironic hinder our ability to have a serious and safe conversation with anyone else? Does irony ultimately prove to be mostly an alienating factor in relationships? It depends. We need that levity in our relationships. It’s fun to bond with people over shared senses of snark, but it’s just an outer-later-of-the-onion sort of thing.
“We’re a generation of cultural paranoia, and we don’t want to be out of the loop on anything,” Dailey says. “We want to be in on the joke, aware when we are being duped. Irony is like a self-aware announcement that you know what is going on and will not be duped.”
