Throughout history, irony has served useful purposes, like providing a rhetorical outlet for unspoken societal tensions. But our contemporary ironic mode is somehow deeper; it has leaked from the realm of rhetoric into life itself. This ironic ethos can lead to a vacuity and vapidity of the individual and collective psyche.
~ Christy Wampole from, http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/17/how-to-live-without-irony/
slip:4unyho1.
I’m not concerned with — or perhaps, “I’m not interested in spending time on” — the stylistic ironies which are common today. I see no point in assaulting things like “hipster” fashion, when every generation criticizes the fashion of the next. I seriously say: Sure, fine, whatever.
However, it does seem that there is a lot of “shallow” out there; Shallow thinking in particular. That scares the crap out of me.
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