Inside Jokes I have with Myself
In real life, doing things ironically is the exact same as doing the same things un-ironically.
You’re the only one who knows it’s ironic.
Intention is not bound to correlate with perception.
Irony can take three forms:
Verbal: The use of dissonance between verbal communication and its intended message for humouristic effect
ie using words that appear to mean the opposite of what you are trying to say.
Situational: When the expected outcome of a situation is the opposite to its actuality / when there is incongruity between what a person says, does and and how matters actually are
ie Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury is a novel depicting the dangers of book burning and censorship through a dystopian America in which the role of firemen is to burn all literature. Fahrenheit 451 is in the top 100 on America’s Banned Books list.
ie A pilot who is afraid of heights
Dramatic: When the audience beholds more awareness or information than the character concerned
ie watching the protagonist open the closet in which a villain hides with murderous intent.
Irony as a literary device is a slow burning ruse, requiring last minute twists and revelations.
Though not all forms of irony are conscious or planned, irony can be the serendipitous result of circumstance and evolution, revealing it as a possible allegory for the fragility of the human condition in which consequences are more often than not incongruent to intentions and expectations.
Irony is the shatter between belief and reality, although a philosopher of hermeneutics might argue that reality itself is up for interpretation and irony might be one way of understanding it.
For irony to be defined as “polar opposition between two elements, such as a semblance of things and reality” then you have to buy into our epoch’s interpretation of truth as that which can be certified by facts, which is a more recent development than one might think. We take truth for granted. We are conditioned by our era of technology and efficiency to believe that scientific school of thought is the only dependable source of knowledge. But, is reading about a painting the same as standing in front of it in awe ? When we speed up a travel route through updated engines, what is the time we save worth if we do not spend it on anything particular ? What if we prioritised hedonism over efficiency ? Wouldn’t that be a more efficient life ? I digress.
To an outside eye, the inside jokes I have with myself can be material for jokes to be made against me. Well at least someone is laughing ! When I adopt lingo that does not look good on me, when I overuse misused baby boomer emojis - when you, my friend, accidentally absorb detestable internet slang into your daily speech after joking about it for a first few months. When you snap your fingers in the mirror like a main character, when you tell a joke that no one hears, when you adopt that ironic tone a little too casually for it to be taken in by the listener… Do you not mean to say exactly what you say for laughs ? Do you not intend to do exactly what you do for laughs ?
If irony happens in third person perspective, and no one catches your intention, does your intention cancel out ? I’ve always been a supporter of the importance of intention equaling the actions themselves. Perhaps nothing that happens internally necessitates validation. But wouldn’t a reality in which intersubjectivity* weighs so little be so sad ? I’m only thinking out loud.
*In philosophy, psychology, sociology, and anthropology, intersubjectivity is the relation or intersection between people's cognitive perspectives.
P.S: It took us this much time to understand why British northerners talk about themselves in the plural first person and we like it.