Irony (and/or snark) ruining stuff

http://www.salon.com/2014/04/13/david_foster_wallace_was_right_irony_is_ruining_our_culture/

I thought this was a good read. Irony without purpose leads to, well, what?

 

I'm getting sick of the "every fucking thing in the world sucks" attitude.

 

Honestly, since I stopped reading Slate and Deadspin I rarely see that crap anymore.

 

Basically, if you go on just about any message board (covering any subject) anywhere in the world, and post positively about anything, you immediately get swamped by a stampede of snarksters torching you as a 'fanboi,' 'dupe,' 'sheep', 'shill', 'sucker,' etc etc etc.

There are Springsteen message boards where as soon as anyone posts, "great concert tonight," a dozen trolls dogpile on them, "oh bullshit fanboi, he was way better in 1978, you must be a shill for his PR firm," etc etc etc.


And it's not just message board trolls, either. A lot of professional 'critics' or columnists do it too.

 

It only ruins things if you let it ruin things. Who the fuck cares what other people think about the things you like?

 

Interesting piece, although I do think there is a burgeoning post-ironic movement.

That aside, I would say that a big part of the cynicism dwells in the now ubiquitous acceptance of any entertainment or any creative endeavor as 'art.'

As former aspiring Romantic lit. professor, I'd say his reference to Shelley is appropriate.
Not that Shelley is particularly to blame, he certainly believed in craftmanship and artisanship as precursor to art.
But, more importantly, I argue that modernism and post-modernism are really just subsets of the Romantic movement.
The popular belief in art today focuses on artistic creation itself rather than the 'art' created.
That is a very Romantic idea, and that is why I believe that almost all large artistic movements of the past 200 years have really been subsets of the Romantic movement.

The paradox: if 'art' is any creative endeavor, then art ceases to exist.
There's the source of the cynicism.
I love John Lennon's music, but if his work holds the same artistic value as Mozart or Bach then we are justifiably cynical.
If TV shows and pop music are art because they are creative endeavors, then so are bumper stickers, T-shirts, billboards and radio commercials.

The flattening of 'art' has robbed it of validity, and that is part of the cynicism.

 

We SportsJournalists.com wrestling smarks are tame in comparison to other boards I've seen when it come to snark.

 

Ironic

 

I expect depressives like Drew Magary to say everything sucks.
But in the online whorebait clickbait world, it pays to be negative rather than positive.

 

Not everything in the world sucks, although you do.

 

I'd also say that discussion of positive and negative aspects of something do not constitute a 'this sucks' attitude.

Talking about things that could have been better in an already good piece of work is not a 'this sucks' attitude.

 

Star Man is on record multiple times as saying something as mutually agreed upon as Katy Perry's mammaries, in fact doth suck.