The Disbeliever’s Guide to Authenticity by Toby Shorin
[I]rony is a natural stance to take when constantly making judgments between “real” and “fake,” authentic and inauthentic. It’s a coping mechanism for preserving one’s commitment to authenticity in the midst of a commodified and commoditized society.
Irony is a way of shirking responsibility. It reifies the logic of authenticity while desperately asserting moral superiority.
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Isn’t it ironic? by Kyle Raymond Fitzpatrick
Somehow our ironic cynicism transformed into this profound laziness, this shrugging “Whatever.” that has become our response to everything. Excited about nothing, apathetic about everything, awe in short supply because we’re simultaneously too calloused to show up as humans and too bothered to believe that what happens in the world really actually affects you.
Millennials are well aware of where the current state of irony comes from, this Elisasue of sincerity that turned everything into a joke: hipster irony, of wearing something outré to push against norms which were also an expression of economic circumstances (thrifting, living in cheaper areas), evolved into a low-boiling constant sarcasm that morphed into an internet-wide way-of-seeing, which is now contemporary culture’s way-of-seeing. Shitposting as posting. Critique as comment.
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The Mainstreaming of Loserdom by Telling the Bees
Over the past few years, something has shifted in the perception of acceptable recreational behavior, or the way people talk about their hobbies: people are gleeful to admit they have no hobbies, no interests, no verve. Somehow, one of the main “hobbies” accepted by the masses is staying home, laying in bed, scrolling on their phones and watching television.
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Posting Less by Anne Helen Petersen
If you’ve posted on Instagram about politics, you’re familiar with its impossible contradictions: posting something is wrong, but so is posting nothing. Posting with your own words is wrong, but so is reposting something without your own words. Posting while acknowledging your power is annoying, but posting without it is oblivious. You should center other voices but you shouldn’t do it cloyingly. Silence makes you complicit but also: shut the fuck up.
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Welcome to the ‘mask-off’ era by Jemima Kelly (Financial Times) – archive link
Creative young people want to be countercultural, and being “woke” feels mainstream and virtually middle-aged these days… Saying what you actually think — or at least being seen to — is cool now; sticking to a prescribed social etiquette about what you can and can’t say is not.
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The Case for Embracing Cringe by Joan Westenberg
The Very Online crowd would have called every social movement cringe before it became history. The abolitionists? Cringe. The suffragists? Cringe. The labor organizers who got beaten to death so we could have weekends? Cringe. Stonewall? Cringe. Climate activists gluing themselves to roads? Ridiculously cringe.
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It’s easy to laugh at people who “choose the mountain” – deliberately making their lives harder and more complicated to pursue their values. We laugh because we’ve been taught, we’ve been convinced that sincerity and idealism are cringeworthy, embarrassing to the point of pornographic discomfort.
See also: The draw of the herd
