A Poor Telling of Why Irony is Dead

Irony is dead---no one should be saying anything that they don't personally believe in or mean on the 'net any more.

This, unfortunately, means the death of the third wave of the 'net.

I know there's a lot to unpack here, but considering that I'm on leave today (and not sick, for once!), I can talk a little bit more on what I mean.

The first wave of the 'net, I was not a part of. As far as I could tell, this happened when the only folks on the 'net were those from the universities, roughly when the World Wide Web was first created. The crowd then were the bookish/academic sorts considering the background. Multimedia was not normal, and thus text interactions a la Usenet were the norm. With text as the primary means of communication, natural extensions of literary techniques (including irony) are the norm, and for the most part, it was ``obvious'' what was being said.

The second wave of the 'net, I was sort of a part of. This was when rudimentary multimedia started their ascent, where graphical interfaces started their long run towards dominance. The 'net was still mostly text based---personal websites were the main information sources, and indexed pages (first by hand, then automatically using variants of PageRank) that were accessible via search mechanisms were one of the newer means of creating reach with the said personal websites. Interactive text messages via IRC or any of the personal messaging platforms flourished, as were the various privately hosted 'net forums.

The user space was starting to get diluted a little, with initial exposure to the nerdier teenages, before slowly percolating out to the less nerdier teenagers. Word play and other literary traditions were still predominant in the communication sphere, and several aphorisms were introduced, including classics like: ``Don't feed the troll.'', and ``On the Internet, no one can tell if you're a dog.'' As funny as the aphorisms may sound, they conveyed a wisdom of never trusting whatever was being posted on the 'net.

Some claimed that MySpace was the start of the third wave, others said it was the burst of the blogs over Blogger or even LiveJournal. But I think the real start of the third wave is Facebook. Facebook was the ``true'' progenitor of the social media revolution. It was originally for college-going folk only, with gatekeeping done at the email address that was used for account creation (it had to end with .edu or otherwise demonstrated to be of a college/university---the specific details on the requirements was never sought by me then). Its purpose was to act as the social events tool.

For the college students in the year of 2006, if you weren't on Facebook, you just weren't going to get anywhere socially---there was simply no way around it. It mirrored a lot of the original first wave 'net, in the sense that the folks on it were somewhat bookish due to being college people. While it was still text heavy, communications technology as a whole has enabled pictures (not videos!) to increase their importance.

Especially since it cost ``nothing'' now to upload pictures, share one's thoughts, and ``socialise''---no need to find paid/free hosting to run your own website, and no need to explain to people how to find it since they can just ``add'' you on Facebook, and see everything there as a part of the newsfeed.

Then Facebook opened up to the rest of the population that was not college-going folk. And it went sideways, because there was no guarantee that whoever is reading whatever is written would be sufficiently attuned to the nuances of what was said.

At the risk of infantilisation, when the written word is made available to all sundry, those who aren't learned enough will take things at face value. They can't tell truth from bullshit, irony from fact, and hyperbole from reality.

And the trolls loved that. Trolls were on a losing path for a long time as the wisdom of the 'net propagated among those who were nerdy enough to be on the 'net. But now, with all these clueless normies who cannot see that the 'net is quite different in style from the real world, the trolls had fresh meat to work with.

And work with the fresh meat the trolls did.

It was originally just bad faith ``fun'', like brigading public polls, or creating bad memes. There were some consequences, but were mostly harmless.

Then the true agent provocateurs started to lurk among the trolls, creating situations that led to real world consequences. Hoaxes, foreign influences to elections, witch hunts, deliberate self-sabotaging through careful application of doublespeak---it would make the trolls from the 1990s drool with sheer envy at the amount of real world impact these agent provocateurs have managed to create.

The permanent 'net mob is thus born.

This mob sees no reason---they run on their own internally inconsistent logic. They perform witch hunts; they are functionally illiterate.

As such, if they ever feel that they are slighted, they will descend upon the alleged offender like a pile of bricks.

And they will co-opt anyone whose words seem to back what they believe in, creating a guilt-by-association set up.

Doesn't matter if what is said in an ironic sense. And God help you if you point out that you were being ironic---that witch hunt will come regardless.

And so, irony is dead.

Stay safe---say only what you mean, and avoid anything that requires at least one braincell to interpret.