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Writing | Literature
People Don’t Understand What Irony Actually Is
A minor literary rant.
I’ll give you an example.
I went to the beach with a good friend here in Florida.
He’s this naturally jacked dude, with bizarre genetics that make him look like a bodybuilder after doing three pushups. He also has pale skin and burns as easily as an Irish Albino.
He put on 80-proof sunscreen several times, trying his best to avoid exposure. At one point, he looked like he was encased in some type of white clay. People were giving him strange stares.
Yet despite caking himself in sunscreen, he was still burnt to a crisp in the end. He said, “Wow. After all that, I’m still burned. That’s ironic.”
I love the guy — but it wasn’t ironic.
It was unfortunate.
There are a lot of repeat offenders on the subject. Everything that happens is ironic.
In 2010, Dictionary.com said that “irony” was the most misused term in the English language.
I’m not entirely sure why the misuse bothers me. I will say that life as a writer makes you more nitpicky. You start to understand why English teachers are so type-A and pedantic.
Language doesn’t get enough respect like other disciplines. Perhaps it's because math is more concrete. You have actual solid numbers. They are definitive.
Meanwhile, English has subjective elements and components of artistic expression.
But it doesn’t matter. There are still rules.
People love to fight online about what irony is
I’ve been through this rodeo before.
I’ve written about irony on other platforms and, without fail, people tie themselves into knots arguing about what is and isn’t irony. They latch on to one tiny part of an example I give, forming an argument about why it is actually ironic.
Now, to be clear, there are many types of irony. I’m talking about the type we most commonly know: situational irony.
