What the hell is Irony - An essay by moi.

People don't know what "irony" is AND IT PISSES ME OFF.

get it, it's an 'e' and it's made out of iron ahahahahahahahahahahahah fuck you

Okay so the English language is a giant piece of shit. Hell, advanced language in general is completely stupid. Why did we even bother to evolve complex jaw and mouth bones so we could create deeply complex manipulations of air and pressure to form sophisticated noises that we learned to translate into recognizable sounds in order to refer to the world around and within us? Just so assholes could piss me off by not understanding the language mechanic of irony? Things were better when all we did was throw rocks and grunt. At least then I wouldn't have to keep writing this blog.

So yeah yeah, language is complex. Irony is also a very complex- but not very hard to understand correctly- part of our language. Irony is very easily, and therefore very often, confused or mistaken for mere coincidences; sometimes people will even completely misuse the word 'irony' in just about the most erroneous ways possible. This makes you a fundamentally bad person who will go to hell. 

If you're anything like me, you already know what irony is and you're busy getting angry at people not understanding it. But if you're not anything like me then you may have a weak grasp of the concept of irony. I'm here to help you. I'm kind of a stickler for irony because it's my favorite literary device and when used correctly it can be downright haunting and beautiful, bringing a very deep and profound feeling to the scenes and places it is correctly applied to. And, when it's used incorrectly you look like a giant asshat and I hate you.

So let's begin assessing what irony is by asking...

 WHAT THE HELL IS IRONY?

Irony, in a broad sense, is the unexpected warping of expectation. When you expect something to happen and yet something contradictory to that happens, you have what could be irony. Rather, I suppose it's more accurate to say that you have the basis for irony. Irony needs to be a little bit more than the mere contradiction of expectation, there's a deeper level to it than that. 

A good way to answer 'What the hell is irony' is to examine what isn't irony. Case in point, there's actually an entire song some dipshit wrote that's supposed to be all about irony- except none of the ironic things in the song are actually ironic. 

The song Ironic by famous nobody Alanis Morissette is a song where almost every line aside from the chorus is singing about things that are ironic. Alanis Morissette is STUPID AND DUMB, however, and none of the ironies in her song are actually ironic. Let's take for instance the line;

"An old man turned ninety-eight/He won the lottery and died the next day,"

Okay so this is allllmoooost something that could be irony. It's very close to it, at least. An old man turning so old that when he wins the lottery and dies the next day, by itself, is just tragic coincidence. There needs to be more to it than that. If this old man had been trying to play the lottery his whole entire life so he could buy nice things for his family- but in the end his gambling addiction drove his family away, only for him to finally win when it's too late to make amends... that's irony. But okay, Alanis. Not a bad first try. Let's see what the next lyric says.

"It's a black fly in your Chardonnay,"

Alanis god damn it. You did so good with the first lyric, why'd you go and fuck it all up with this one? A fly (specifically a black fly, I guess. Not one of those purple flies you see all over the place) in your chardonnay isn't ironic, it's just kind of gross/extra protein. Chardonnay is a white whine, but there's nothing ironic about a little black fly getting into it. The whiteness of the chardonnay isn't indicative or representative of anything, thus there's no irony when a bug falls into it. It's just a gross coincidence. What may have made this ironic would be if, eh, say someone noticed a fly in their chardonnay but laughed it off with "nothing wrong with a black fly in your chardonnay!" but when they drink the fly they choke on it and fucking die. I dunno, it's not good irony, but it's irony. There's a deeper meaning to the fly in this context, because it's no longer just a fly in a drink- it's a fly in a drink that is laughed off as harmless but turns out to actually be deadly. Okay so not that great this time, Alanis. What's the next lyric say?

"It's a death row pardon two minutes too late,"

Man don't you just hate it when you're being executed for not using irony correctly but then two minutes after they fill your arm veins with night-night juice you get a pardon? If you weren't rendered unconscious as your heart slowly ceased to beat, you'd probably think your predicament was ironic. But that's because you're a filthy little butthole. There's literally nothing ironic about this lyric, it's just a really shitty coincidence and a product of human error. It's sort of like the first lyric about the old man and the lottery, because it involves getting something you want/need but only getting it once it's too late. That by itself isn't irony alone, it's just tragedy. What might have made this ironic is if they accidentally injected you with kool-aid and you turned into the kool-aid man. Wait, no, that's not ironic that's just fucking stupid woops this song is rubbing off on me fuck.

Okay I won't dissect anymore lyrics from Alanis' song, but hopefully by now I've illustrated a point that there's a difference between mere tragedy or coincidence and true irony. Irony is poetic and has a deeper meaning and context to it. A firefighter dying in a fire is just a tragedy. A rich man who was greedy his whole life but then donates his fortune to charity is just a nice guy/possibly insane. A guy who goes flying out of his seat when his car crashes and smashes into the brick wall of a pillow factory is just coincidence. That building could have been filled with tiny, smaller pillow factories and it still would've just been a coincidence.

Once upon a time in my heroic crusades in arguing on the internet, I encountered a debate wherein the person I was speaking with was incorrectly trying to describe what they thought irony was. One of their examples they tried describing as irony was;

"It's like a stinky fisherman who complains that someone else stinks,"

A stinky fisherman who complains that someone else stinks isn't irony. It's just a stinky guy who lacks an appreciation for self-awareness. I, very heroically, corrected this random person (probably killing him IRL in the process) by rearranging his example into one that was actually ironic;

"It's like a drop-dead beautiful woman who walks up to a fisherman and attempts to seduce him, but the fisherman just grumbles that she doesn't smell fishy enough for his taste,"

My example isn't the best irony, but there's a deeper context to it than the unfortunate soul's above attempt. There's an irony that a fisherman might reject a woman thought to otherwise be irresistible and desirable just because she doesn't stink enough for him. In other words, it's ironic because she's "too good". Another example of irony might be a man who swims through shark infested waters for fun, never once getting harmed by the sharks he swims with. However, he's eventually killed when he runs out of breath and drowns. A man who swims through shark infested waters and dies because he drowned is slightly ironic.

If you want more examples of irony, I'd tell you to Google it but um gosh... when you Google "Irony", do you know what image comes up?

It's this one.

This isn't irony, like, at fucking all. Nothing is ironic about this. NOTHING IS IRONIC ABOUT THIS AND IT'S THE FIRST FUCKING IMAGE THAT COMES UP WHEN YOU GOOGLE "IRONY'. It's not even something that's "kind of" like irony, like a coincidence or something. It's just a stop sign with "defacing stop signs" painted under the word 'stop', so it reads 'STOP DEFACING STOP SIGNS'. What the fuck is supposed to be ironic about this? Nothing, that's what!

And it gets even juicier. Try Googling "examples of irony" and you'll get tons of shit that is not irony. One of the top results is a Reader'sDigest.com list of 25 examples of irony. First of all, the Google search result is typo'd as "irony is real life" instead of "irony in real life" so we're already off to a pretty good fucking start with this one (to be fair if you really think about it deeply, maybe irony IS real life- well played, Reader'sDigest.com, you dumbass platypus fuckers). Whatever. Let's take a look at their list.

"Q-tips, which are bought primarily to clean inside ears, are sold in boxes that expressly warn: "Do not insert inside the ear canal."

THAT IS NOT FUCKING IRONY.

"Another funny example of irony, Sweden's famous Ice Hotel has a smoke detector."

Oh my god man. I love how Buzzfeedy and blurby this is written. "Another funny example!" of something that isn't irony. Fuck you Reader's Digest. I used to like you. Sort of. 

Okay I could go on and complain about their whole list (there's maybe one example about a bull fighter writing a book about not dying to bulls then shortly after getting gored to death by a bull that almost constitutes as irony) but the final installment of their list gave me actual pause.

"None of the song lyrics in Alanis Morissette’s song "Ironic" are examples of irony."

Fuuuuuuuccckkkkk Yoooooooouuuuuuuu Reeaaaadddeerrrrrrs Diiiiigeeesssssst.

Have you ever heard the saying "people in glass houses shouldn't be such dumb fucking twats that they try to roast someone for not using irony correctly after composing an entire fucking list of things that aren't ironic?". God fucking damn it. To try acting all smug and shit after you literally didn't get one example of irony correct 24 god damn times in a row. This is why meteors hit planets and wipe out all life. So the universe doesn't get to this point. 

You know something is fucked up when you try to research what irony is and you get a bunch of bullshit results. To have come so unimaginably far as a species and to have constructed the most advanced and capable civilization in likely all of existence's history and yet so many of us fumble with what irony is. 

Haha. How ironic.

NO JUST KIDDING THAT'S NOT EVEN IRONY BY ITSELF EITHER.

FINAL POINTLESS NUMERICAL SCORE:

0/10

This existence is a cold, dark empty one with no light at the end.