Yadda, yadda, yadda. Post-9/11, post-Charlottesville and post-El Paso, comic irony is not only tone-deaf and uncool, but also complicit with the kind of evil that flourishes outside the solipsistic bubble of Jerry’s apartment. In the mode of comic irony, however, you can hold your guilt and your innocence in two hands and regard them as twin facets of a grand cosmic joke. Our public discourse, increasingly taking place on the internet, also stifles comic irony. When we speak on the internet, we become existentially wedded to the things we say.

Source: New York Times October 07, 2019 18:56 UTC