The Ironist
Issue 256
In recent years I’ve grown accustomed to seeing people demand a special font for irony. Or even to declare that a sentence was supposed to have an ironic tone after they speak. For a long time, I found this startling, regardless of how often it occurred, but I’ve since come to accept that there’s frustration at the root of these cries for clarity.
The peculiar demand for a special font or label for irony appears most often on social media, typically after a misunderstanding. There’s a joke, or an aside, along with a confused reader who interprets the figurative as literal, the comedic as sincere. Eventually, these petite readers discover that words have soared overhead, with the writer’s intention different from what they assumed, and they react, rather strangely for a moment of confusion, with outrage.
To not grasp a meaning is to somehow be insulted. And this interaction that starts with opaque language and that ends with unnecessary miscommunication could have been avoided with a distinctive, pleasing font, they claim, a font that’s visible from a distance—so that those with poor eyesight and distracted temperaments can spot the irony while squinting on a sunny day. On some social media platforms, it’s common to read a sentence and then—in a breathless, anxious coda—to read its clarification, immediately afterward, ensuring that all readers know that the words are intended as a joke, as sarcasm, as insincere.
Although it must take effort to overlook the paradox: to announce your irony before you speak is to lose your capacity for irony. Here is a bind that I can’t escape, as I don’t really possess the linguistic dexterity to craft words that suggest, imply, or hint, in a manner that’s also considered direct; and I’m simply befuddled by the idea that I can transform my implicit speech into explicit speech while I still, somehow, label it as implicit. You can either sneak up on a target like a cat in the shadows or you can charge in like a roaring lion—but you can’t do both at the same time. Irony is a useful tool because it cuts slanted, incisive lines that bend around corners, which makes it a peculiar choice when you demand straight lines.
Irony that arrives with sirens and flashing lights also assumes that the ironist must be understood, that the ironist yearns for the crowd’s approval—which sounds very much like a mistake. An insecure ironist who longs for acceptance is, to me, a contradiction. You might notice the ironic line. You might notice the ironic message. But if you don’t, that’s perfectly fine.
Perhaps that’s even vital: I don’t believe that it is possible to be both ironic and universally understood. If every person in the crowd laughs, you’re probably not in an ironic register. Now that’s perilous territory, close to an elitist view of language, where phrases and meaning and dialects are limited to a particular class. A more exalted view might notice that irony is one of the few linguistic weapons that the individual possesses against the crowd. When you’re in the minority, when you can’t compete—because the norms go against you, because the crowd has already decided what’s true—even shackles can’t prevent your wit.
I suspect that this indifference to comprehension is what’s so unusual about irony in our world today. The notion, in today’s culture, that someone could be indifferent to or even accept a misunderstanding, is perhaps the most confrontational part of this subject. Misunderstandings, in our world, are problems to be solved; ambiguity, in language, is unacceptable. Yet irony thrives on uncertainty: it exists in the gap between what’s said and what’s meant.
But the cultural expectation is that words must be understood instantly—without irony, without ambiguity—which mirrors a broader, social expectation that every voice must not only be heard but also acknowledged. To be misunderstood in our world is not simply an inconvenience, it is unacceptable, so the very fact that an ironist might feel disinclined to explain, to clarify, simply doesn’t fit into the culture, a culture where so much of politics revolves around the unheard, the voiceless, the forgotten—with the implicit message that speaking clearly and being heard is what solves problems.
Regardless of your own political beliefs, you must admit one truth, even if you think it’s incorrect: your political opponents really do believe that they aren’t being heard. Paradoxically this describes politics at a time when technology provides more public voices than ever before. There’s never been a time with so much communication—so it is curious to hear so much talk about the voiceless. In this cacophony, where so many people howl about the unheard, the choice to remain unheard, the choice to remain misunderstood, seems like an act that’s truly defiant.
Even in the smallest interactions, my sense is that it is more difficult today for people to laugh about misunderstandings. When a server confuses an order in a restaurant, or a hotel employee hears the wrong booking, the mistake appears grand, consequential, worthy of anger, rather than simply a part of life, or even humorous. Maybe this is the result of living in such a chaotic and confused world—where there’s a relentless need to know where the truth lies and what’s meant by words. Interactions that would have previously resulted in laughter–that was funny, I’m not sure what she thought I said—seem to have slipped into frustration—I can’t believe that happened, I spoke clearly and she didn’t get it! Not being understood, for so many people, feels simply unacceptable, and that almost certainly results in a need for earnestness, a demand for the literal. Having comfort with contradiction, a sensibility that’s so crucial to a literary life, isn’t what people desire.
Yet I can’t quite go that far, I can’t quite accept this breathless yearning, as the demand for clarity and simplicity feels, to me, a bit rigid—it’s a demand that the world offer you meaning, that the world offer you clarity, which comes close to an almost childlike refusal to listen to what the world’s actually offering. Once, misunderstanding was part of life, a natural and expected price of living in the world. Now, somehow, it’s an offense. We’ve gone from tolerating ambiguity to requesting subtitles and special fonts for irony, which seems very much like a loss. At least there’s a nice irony in noticing that all this searching for literal meaning results in less meaning.
I didn’t know irony fonts were a thing, but it doesn’t surprise me. I do like clarity when seeking a diagnosis from a physician, but even then there are no guarantees. It feels like society has lost its resilience in this age of technology, GPS, Google searches, AI, and immediate feedback. I remember getting lost on roadtrips and it was inconvenient but part of the adventure. Or reading a novel and discussing varied interpretations with fellow students-which was far more interesting than Googling a precise explanation.