Post-irony
I remember a really thoughtful, genuine, non-political story in one of the Uni rags when I was at USyd. It was almost unheard of, and you could tell because the editors were desperate to try to make it funny or clever or witty or anything other than genuine. It was called "I was a teenage post-ironist" (the editors choice of title I suspect) and just lamented the way our generation had gotten into sarcasm and irony so pervasively that we'd excused ourselves entirely from ever needing (and perhaps even being capable) of caring about anything.
Well, I'm becoming increasingly aware that I'm getting older and times move on. Post-irony is here and we're all immersed in it. The post I've linked to is a biting and devastatingly accurate description of how it works.
'Cool' used to be about breaking out of the mould that society forced you into. Now cool is little more than having exquisite taste about which of our society's mass-produced, consumable moulds best expresses You, where You is actually the persona deemed most desirable by one's peers - or by extension, the persona with the biggest marketing budget.
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this story scribbled by jim at 1:57 am
2 Comments:
Interesting post - and good to see you posting after a bit of a drought by the way. I enjoy what I have read thus far.
Funny you mention the irony thing - I have often thought that myself. You only have top go and watch the lifelessness of modern day pub gigs. There almost a cerebral affair, where the only person dancing is the one or two drunk guys who "take it too far" - not that I dance on such occasions, the very thought of responding rhytmically to music outside the confines of my own bedroom makes me nauseous...
Ranted by
b, at 1:19 am
Re naivete: It depends how boradly you define your peers I guess - your own little clique at school or wherever, or your entire generation.
I definitely think there was a time when it wasn't marketed anything like it is now, or mass produced. Which inevitably meant it was localised.
I don't know, maybe cool was entirely a creation of television and the ability to have an entire nation imitate some choosen person.
In the States there's an ongoing discussion about what's Punk, which is sort of a replacement for Cool with the explicit requirement that it not be commercial or mass produced. Of course, you still have the lemmings who want to be Punk without going to the trouble of ripping their own jeans or decorating their own T-shirts and so the cycle repeats.
So to get back to your question I guess I was trying to say that while there's always a degree of wanting to fit in and be liked but there used to be more. There used to be a fair component of self-expression but that has gradually become subsumed within mass-production: "We'll think of your personal self expressions for you!"
Ranted by
jim, at 4:46 am
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