Irony is a means of simultaneously signalling and countersignalling.
By ironically obeying correct social forms, it is possible to receive status from conventional culture and counter-culture. The conventional culture does not want to admit that it is the butt of irony, and the counterculture likes people who score points off of the conventional culture. Is anyone aware of research into irony as a signalling strategy?
Saying X=”I’m dropping out of school to join a doomsday cult” in a blatantly ironic way gives you the benefits of implying ‘to unschooled eyes, it would appear that X—don’t be unschooled’ along with ‘I’m sophisticated enough to be aware that certain aspects my decision look as if X’ and ‘I’m confident enough about my decision to make light of this’, before finally concluding ‘but of course, it’s not actually true that X’.
I was once at a very indie film festival which had some very indie bands playing before the films started, and the hot-pink-haired lead singer of one of the bands had a Hannah Montana shirt. To this crowd, that sent an unmistakable message: “Ha ha, why am I wearing this shirt, clearly I’m one of you because there’s no way I could be serious about liking Hannah Montana.”
On the other hand, it would signal coolness or at least normalcy to certain parts of the “conventional culture” (specifically, young teenage girls who actually do like HM, and older people who think that’s a normal sort of thing for them young folks to like, and who don’t distinguish much between wildly different subgroups of young folks).
That’s the general formula, though usually for it to work specifically as SirBacon described, the relevant subset of “conventional culture” needs to be larger. But when it’s not — if you’re going around in your Hannah Montana shirt and there are a lot of people who neither take it as non-ironically positive nor are aware of the intended irony, and consequently look down on you — it still works, though in a different way: you get to gain even more status among your indie/hipster friends when you tell them about that stupid mainstream chump who didn’t get the joke. (However, getting that kind of response might also feel good for reasons unrelated to status — comparable, perhaps, to internet trolls who relish the angry/disgusted/eye-rolling responses they get from people taking them seriously, even if they are completely solitary and anonymous, leaving them no chance of being lauded by other trolls for their success.)
Link is to David Brooks, an elite columnist for an elite paper, chiding “elites”. He gets paid for this stuff, and is presumably read in earnest by millions of Americans.
There are some interesting, or at least amusing, higher-order phenomena that follow from that.
The possibility of claiming to like something ironically, while actually liking it in earnest, in order to avoid rejection (or at least mockery) from some group or subculture that one identifies with. I don’t hang out with a lot of people who are really countercultural or hipstery, but I’d probably still do that if I found myself honestly liking, for instance, a Miley Cyrus song. (Just an example. So far, I see little risk of that happening. :P)
The hypothetical class of people I’ve named “metahipsters”. Ordinary hipsters pride themselves on having liked something before it became (perceived as) mainstream or after it had faded from the mainstream, or because it remains (perceived as) non-mainstream, etc. The metahipster prides him/herself on having liked things unpopular, pre-/post-popular, or unacceptable among hipsters. (I’m trying to bring top hats back. If I succeed, there’ll probably be hipsters bragging about how they liked top hats before they got all mainstream, while I’ll get to brag about how I liked top hats before they got all popular with hipsters. I have no idea what this signals. Feel free to psychoanalyze me.)
Related to both of the previous two items: I actually have some friends who follow a typical hipster aesthetic, but claim to be doing that only ironically. I still find it a bit hard to wrap my mind around that.
Irony is a means of simultaneously signalling and countersignalling.
By ironically obeying correct social forms, it is possible to receive status from conventional culture and counter-culture. The conventional culture does not want to admit that it is the butt of irony, and the counterculture likes people who score points off of the conventional culture. Is anyone aware of research into irony as a signalling strategy?
Saying X=”I’m dropping out of school to join a doomsday cult” in a blatantly ironic way gives you the benefits of implying ‘to unschooled eyes, it would appear that X—don’t be unschooled’ along with ‘I’m sophisticated enough to be aware that certain aspects my decision look as if X’ and ‘I’m confident enough about my decision to make light of this’, before finally concluding ‘but of course, it’s not actually true that X’.
Irony signals a lot.
Have you ever done this? Example?
Why Can’t Anyone Tell I’m Wearing This Business Suit Ironically?
I was once at a very indie film festival which had some very indie bands playing before the films started, and the hot-pink-haired lead singer of one of the bands had a Hannah Montana shirt. To this crowd, that sent an unmistakable message: “Ha ha, why am I wearing this shirt, clearly I’m one of you because there’s no way I could be serious about liking Hannah Montana.”
On the other hand, it would signal coolness or at least normalcy to certain parts of the “conventional culture” (specifically, young teenage girls who actually do like HM, and older people who think that’s a normal sort of thing for them young folks to like, and who don’t distinguish much between wildly different subgroups of young folks).
That’s the general formula, though usually for it to work specifically as SirBacon described, the relevant subset of “conventional culture” needs to be larger. But when it’s not — if you’re going around in your Hannah Montana shirt and there are a lot of people who neither take it as non-ironically positive nor are aware of the intended irony, and consequently look down on you — it still works, though in a different way: you get to gain even more status among your indie/hipster friends when you tell them about that stupid mainstream chump who didn’t get the joke. (However, getting that kind of response might also feel good for reasons unrelated to status — comparable, perhaps, to internet trolls who relish the angry/disgusted/eye-rolling responses they get from people taking them seriously, even if they are completely solitary and anonymous, leaving them no chance of being lauded by other trolls for their success.)
Hipsters)
escape your closing parenthesis.
I suddenly want “Escape your closing parenthesis.” on a t-shirt.
If that’s the caption, here’s the image.
Hahahaha. Best transhumanist slogan ever.
Fixed link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hipster_(contemporary_subculture))
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/19/opinion/19brooks.html
Link is to David Brooks, an elite columnist for an elite paper, chiding “elites”. He gets paid for this stuff, and is presumably read in earnest by millions of Americans.
There are some interesting, or at least amusing, higher-order phenomena that follow from that.
The possibility of claiming to like something ironically, while actually liking it in earnest, in order to avoid rejection (or at least mockery) from some group or subculture that one identifies with. I don’t hang out with a lot of people who are really countercultural or hipstery, but I’d probably still do that if I found myself honestly liking, for instance, a Miley Cyrus song. (Just an example. So far, I see little risk of that happening. :P)
The hypothetical class of people I’ve named “metahipsters”. Ordinary hipsters pride themselves on having liked something before it became (perceived as) mainstream or after it had faded from the mainstream, or because it remains (perceived as) non-mainstream, etc. The metahipster prides him/herself on having liked things unpopular, pre-/post-popular, or unacceptable among hipsters. (I’m trying to bring top hats back. If I succeed, there’ll probably be hipsters bragging about how they liked top hats before they got all mainstream, while I’ll get to brag about how I liked top hats before they got all popular with hipsters. I have no idea what this signals. Feel free to psychoanalyze me.)
Related to both of the previous two items: I actually have some friends who follow a typical hipster aesthetic, but claim to be doing that only ironically. I still find it a bit hard to wrap my mind around that.