[HN Gopher] What Irony Is Not (2020)
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What Irony Is Not (2020)
Author : elliekelly
Score : 28 points
Date : 2021-08-08 18:20 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (thereader.mitpress.mit.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (thereader.mitpress.mit.edu)
| Jtsummers wrote:
| An interesting read, I still often have trouble discerning what
| irony is supposed to be versus the colloquial use.
|
| So I'll pose this as a question to the community: About halfway
| down the article there was a link (for me) to "What Nihilism is
| Not" with a description "In order to preserve nihilism as a
| meaningful concept, it's necessary to distinguish it from
| pessimism, cynicism, and apathy." Is it ironic that in an article
| about irony there is a link to an article on a philosophy
| premised on the _meaninglessness_ of life that intends to
| preserve its _meaningfulness_?
| akiselev wrote:
| Do you find it ironic? That's pretty much the only thing that
| matters because irony _is_ colloquial. Every textbook
| definition of "irony" that I can find includes a human
| observer in judgement of the situation - the universe has no
| intrinsic concept of irony, only humans with expectations and a
| sense of humor do.
| sidlls wrote:
| This seems reductive to the point of uselessness. Technically
| every situation involving communication includes the
| judgement of a human observer: to extend your argument, we
| may as well assert there is no non-colloquial understanding
| of basically any word.
| chairhairair wrote:
| An interesting question! Here is my impression after reading
| this article on irony:
|
| It is ironic to write an article with the aim of preserving the
| meaningfulness of the term nihilism.
|
| It is not ironic to embed a link to that article within an
| article about irony.
| coldtea wrote:
| The article tortures its subject, while never really defining
| irony.
|
| If we go by the dictionary, we see that regular people are using
| irony quite well:
|
| (1) the expression of one's meaning by using language that
| normally signifies the opposite, typically for humorous or
| emphatic effect.
|
| That's a hipster wearing a hillbilly stgan t-shirt ironically, or
| someone lauding Epstein as a paragon of virtue, and so on. This
| kind is well undestood and people usually don't argue over its
| semantics.
|
| (2) a state of affairs or an event that seems deliberately
| contrary to what one expects and is often wryly amusing as a
| result.
|
| This is the kind of irony the article is preoccupied with.
|
| The key, I think, is the situation being "wryly amusing".
|
| I'd say that this kind of irony involves some kind of a "cosmic
| joke" (a kind of soft or heavier prank the universe plays on
| you/us). Not literally of course: it's just how it feels.
|
| This definition fits the dictionary definition (2) above, and the
| article cases, like the diabetic going for his meds and being run
| over by a sugar (or insulin, even better) truck.
|
| And, let's say that contrary to popular "de-bunking", finding a
| trove of spoons when you're just looking for a knife (as in
| Alanis' lyrics), qualifies. As does "winning the lottery and
| diying the next day" or "a death row pardon two minutes too late"
| (also lyrics from the same song).
|
| A lot of the semantic arguments against cases of (2) is mostly
| people expecting irony to always involve an element of (1), or to
| be necessarily much more than "wryly" amusing case of (2).
| andi999 wrote:
| I disagree. At least for me the 'wryly amusing' needs the
| events to be connected. Like death row pardon just too late
| doesn't do that for me. Death row pardon too late because you
| were on death row for killing Telefon operator 'Speedy' does
| it.
|
| Winning lottery and dying in your newly bought racing car, ok.
| Just dying, I do not see the irony.
|
| But it might just be me, and probably as with taste one cannot
| really discuss that.
| OscarCunningham wrote:
| I think an important factor in irony is that it's an apparent
| opposition between two aspects of a situation _that do not in
| fact affect each other_.
|
| So the diabetic being killed by the insulin truck is ironic,
| because the contents of the truck no not in fact affect the
| lethality of being hit by it.
|
| But the death row pardon coming in too late isn't ironic,
| because the pardon actually could have prevented the death.
| Whereas your example of 'Speedy' is ironic, because the
| nickname of the victim has no causal effect on the speed of
| the pardon.
|
| Examples where the two oposed aspects of the situation
| actually do affect each other aren't ironic, they're just an
| ordinary conflict
| ossopite wrote:
| I agree with the sibling, I don't think it's _necessary_
| for the contradictory aspects to have no casual link. There
| just has to be some kind of surprising contradiction,
| although maybe you tend to feel more entertained by the
| surprise when there is no obvious cause-and-effect.
|
| To my mind a pardon that comes too late, or the lottery-
| bought racing car accident, are unfortunate but don't
| really hold a striking contradiction. That seems more
| significant than the causality.
| coldtea wrote:
| I think whether the two elements affect each other is
| orthogonal to the situation being ironic.
|
| It can be an acausual relationship (e.g. as in the classic
| observation "it's ironic how the bus always arrives just
| when you light your cigarette").
|
| Or it can be a casual relationship (e.g. "A marriage
| councelor in an unhappy marriage" or the article's "the
| diabetic down on his meds, being run over by an insulin
| truck"- that is the very thing that he seeked and that
| would helped his health).
| coldtea wrote:
| > _I disagree. At least for me the 'wryly amusing' needs the
| events to be connected._
|
| They don't need to be connected casually. They are, however,
| connected, by pertaining to the same subject and e.g. having
| contradictory qualities (in the example the pardon vs
| execution, plus the amusing timing).
|
| > _Winning lottery and dying in your newly bought racing car,
| ok. Just dying, I do not see the irony._
|
| The irony being that you were served this great luck just
| before you got handed the ultimate unluckiness (thus
| rendering it all useless to you).
| 988747 wrote:
| > The irony being that you were served this great luck just
| before you got handed the ultimate unluckiness
|
| The irony in crashing in your newly bought sports car (or
| private jet) is in the fact that you were longing for a
| lottery win your whole life, hoping that it will bring you
| happiness, but instead it brought you death.
|
| Dying for a reason that is not directly related to your
| newly acquired wealth is something different.
| amelius wrote:
| Try defining humor. You can write a book about it and it would
| still be missing the point. Since irony is part of humor, any
| attempt to define it is probably similarly problematic. So my
| advice would be to either let it rest, or to be prepared for
| some unsatisfactory conclusions.
| smitty1e wrote:
| Humor is the unit test suite of life.
|
| That is, we validate our existential understanding by
| cracking jokes about all aspects thereof.
| leephillips wrote:
| Def. (1) is better as a definition of sarcasm. Irony is more
| general, and can be far more subtle than the employment of
| simple opposites.
| coldtea wrote:
| Sarcarm is irony in the sense of (1) but more snarky and
| heavy handed. Sarcasm, in other words, is "dismissive/heavily
| mocking" irony.
|
| > _Irony is more general, and can be far more subtle than the
| employment of simple opposites._
|
| Well, wearing an in-appropriate cultural outfit as per my
| example, can be quite subtle. It's not just a "simple
| opposite" (like a Dem wearing a MAGA hat), it can tie to all
| kinds of subtle knowledge of this or that subculture.
| [deleted]
| 123pie123 wrote:
| a good example of irony is the song: Ironic by Alanis Morissette
|
| whose lyrics aren't ironic (they're examples of unfortunate
| situations), thus having a song about irony - that isn't actually
| ironic (in its lyrics)
|
| thus making it the best ironic song ever
| [deleted]
| sonograph wrote:
| > Irony" is a term that everyone uses and seems to understand. It
| is also a concept that is notoriously difficult to define.
|
| I've always thought this. It's easier to explain irony using
| examples than to define it.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| Unless you pick examples from the famous song by Alanis
| Morissette https://youtu.be/Jne9t8sHpUc
| leephillips wrote:
| For irony as a means of expression, the standard definition
| seems to be adequate: when the intended meaning is not the same
| as the literal meaning.
| David2076 wrote:
| This definition is referenced in the article and is outdated
| according to newer editions of Fowlers but still the one I go by
|
| http://paganpressbooks.com/jpl/FOWLER.HTM
| _frkl wrote:
| Nice article, thanks. Reminds me of this Ed Byrne bit, which I've
| totally forgotten about but always thought was quite funny:
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XfpB0kDLEts&feature=youtu.be
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