Irony Poisoning
If you've been acquainted deeply enough with the internet over the last decade (particularly post-COVID), you'd have noticed that it's not just that we're not happy.. it's almost like we don't want to be.
Eighth Grade was, in my opinion, the most accurate portrayal of middle school and pubescent qualms, in cinematic history. This was as sincere as Bo Burnham could get, that too, without putting his face on display or his voice on Spotify.
He put his face on a poster and his voice on Spotify all over again.
Now, what is irony, anyway?
Google Dictionary would define it as:
"of or like iron."
Oops, wrong irony.
Google Dictionary would also define irony thusly:
The expression of one's meaning by using language that normally signifies the opposite, typically for humorous or emphatic effect.
It's basically sarcasm, in a sense. Oh you know, lying. For fun.
Irony is also a fun literary device I like noticing a lot. Different from Chandler Bing, irony in fiction is when the audience realises something the character does not, here's a situation where both humorous and literary irony are sizzled together:
On a fateful Valentine's Day, Kate whispered into her lover's ear.
"Naomi, I'm so glad you're alive. I sure hope nothing bad happens to ruin it. See you tomorrow!" Kate chuckled before she kissed Naomi on her forehead.
Naomi perished in a car accident the very next day.
Irony as a literary device can be quite charming in the right amounts, but my autistic bum struggles intercepting the other kind of irony aforementioned.
Why are we poisoned?
In the context of irony poisoning, sarcasm and irony are seemingly used as coping mechanisms while we seethe in our pain. Salt-rubbed ignorance of our problems, instead of looking for a bandaid.
David Foster Wallace said in an interview,
"Irony is the song of the bird who has come to love its cage." while referencing Hyde's "Alcohol & Poetry: John Berryman and the Booze Talking".
And that's a pretty fun way to put it. We have been so deeply caged and for so long, we stopped caring and started chirping. It's an interesting theory.
Now, what is this cage?
I always think we're all in cages bound by innumerable locks. A state of having no locks and being in no cage, is widely known as Nirvāṇa. That is, enlightenment. That's no fourth dimension, as I understand it. That's a practice. It's "self-actualisation" maintained.
Like my favorite stand-up comic Kanan Gill said, (paraphrased) "Ever since there was, it was wrong." It was never right! We were never okay!
But this is to deny the fact that we are somehow.. extra miserable. It's unlikely that we'll be out of our cages, but it seems we couldn't even breathe through its grids. Our problems are perpetual and pervasive, inevitable and inescapable. Is all we could do, when picking locks seems so tiring.. to sit back and chirp?
Do we really love our cages?
The assumption that we love our cages sounds like a cop-out to me. I don't think never being free is what any of us really want. No one could realistically, ultimately, want to just sing in a cage. Irony can be fun in small doses, but didn't we overdose long ago?
Known by many names, Gregory ("jREG"? "JREG"? "JrEg"?) Guevara is a Canadian YouTuber and persona. I say persona, because he puts up a front on purpose. We're never exposed to how he would authentically present himself in front of his family and friends. We don't even know if the peaks behind the curtains that we get are constructed to confuse us as well.
Even more confusing, he has these "JRERA"s (get it?), and in his current one, he was uploaded a lot about self-help and getting better. He now insists upon finding the right community, making art and being productive. This was surprising, this was so unlike his other eras. It's unclear if he took the veil off or is just utterly messing with our brains. But he insists that this irony crap is beyond the point. It's reductive, I agree. It easily gets old, and does not help us get better at all in the long run.
More confusingly, he simultaneously posts videos like his older ones, where it's clear he's putting up a front of a persona(s).
And now, for my favorite:
Ahh, Bo Burnham. His first songs were just a kid being a kid (with a lot of talent, at that). He messed around with irony a lot. He even wrote a song called Ironic.
But he was also 15-20 years old during that phase. Can you blame him?
But he too, like Greg, shifted more towards sincerity later on. It was a slow pendulum shift. The sincerity, after all his stand-up shows, culminated in his directorial debut.
About a couple years later, Bo was quarantined.
At this point, the pendulum of sincerity had swung swiftly towards the other direction, the ball hit the surface too hard, and quivered there instead of properly swinging back. (Can you tell I like metaphors?)
It's fun to think that Bo stripped himself bare almost completely (see picture below), but I think that's far from the truth.
For context, Bo filmed himself locked inside his home, making music, filming himself do that, filming himself have panic attacks, and filming himself go insane, it's all a one man crew. This isn't irony glazed over sincerity: it's potent irony. The only sincere part of Inside is that it serves as social commentary for our current society.
This irony we see in Inside, it came from a time of when Bo was struggling.
In both these examples, they start out loving the figurative song. I don't think they loved the cage. The song was just interesting when they had nothing else.
It takes a lot more strength to pick a lock than to whistle. Horrible situations put even the emotionally sound of us into hitting rock bottom, it can be so hard to climb back. Let's just spit on the rocks!
We're not born "ironed out" like that, something happens to us. Sincerity can either hint at inexperience or strength. Irony is plain incompetence. We have to let go of it at some point. The bird never loved its cage. Maybe the song, but never the cage.
And it's time we at least breathe, if not fly.
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