New sincerity is garbage. we should embrace irony

new sincerity is garbage. we should embrace irony

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how about neither because irony is the new sincerity

>DFWfw
>holy shit im becoming a literary icon
>all i need is a literary movement to accompany my icon status and they'll have entire college courses dedicated to me
>let's go with something like post-irony
>yea let's call it new sincerity

he just made up some bullshit and hoped people went along with it. his own work is dripping with irony. the closest he came to leading this movement was writing an essay iirc (been like 8 years since i read all his work).

you have to be careful with DFW because if anything his work was very insincere. the dude was ALWAYS trying to manage how he was perceived. that meant pretending to be an expert in mathematics and linguistics and omitting information where it was convenient for his audience to fill in the blank (eg. his drug use history which it's clear he wants everyone to believe is long and varied but in reality is just a couple of puffs of pot). i enjoy his writing but in many ways he's a big phony.

what you want is substance

You should just leave the U.S. for two seconds and understand that irony is something used for humor and stop taking it so fucking seriously,

Agreed

yeah, if i remember correctly he was also obsessed with the concept of being a fraud and it's very clear from his books and his public appearances that he wanted to appear smart

irony is cowardice. it's disgusting.

the only actual reason why irony has become the disease that it is, is because as we've become accustomed to greater levels of constant stimulation, our people have lost the motivation to become extremely good at anything.

so they do shitty art, and if get called out on it they have their defense: but i didn't mean it, it wasn't sincere.

that is literally all that irony means today. it means that you're not good and you pretend you don't feel bad about it because 'it was just a prank bro', nevermind the fact that there's no evidence you're capable of a serious artistic act of any quality whatsoever.

is this an ironic or sincere sentiment?

Why wouldn't we? Irony is nothing new, just look at Chaucer

>he just made up bullshit

His essay E Unibus Pluram where he talks about new sincerity was before he published Infinite Jest. Maybe this is just me, but his opinions on television, irony, and postmodernism seem to be genuine.

jsomers.net/DFW_TV.pdf

Humor won’t save you; it doesn’t really do anything at all. You can look at life ironically for years, maybe decades; there are people who seem to go through most of their lives seeing the funny side, but in the end, life always breaks your heart. Doesn’t matter how brave you are, how reserved, or how much you’ve developed a sense of humor, you still end up with your heart broken. That’s when you stop laughing. In the end there’s just the cold, the silence and the loneliness. In the end, there’s only death.

That feel when it only takes you 21 years of life to become heartbroken and disillusioned. It would be impossible for me to live ironically at this point.

Reminder that DFW was so spiritually inept that he actually FLUNKED OUT as a catechumen when trying to join the Catholic Church.

new sincerity is garbage but irony has gotten way too stale
We need neo absurdity

Television was very important to the generation Wallace grew up in.
Just like the internet is to us.
A millennial Wallace would write about the internets effect on literature.
Really, the two biggest things about the millennial mentality are September 11th, and the internet.
I think 9/11 was an historical event that really broke us out of that 90's gen x super cynicism Wallace was wary of.
Now we are more like a pendulum that swings between sincerity and irony.

Like nowadays you see lots of people who just embrace liking the embarrassing thing, risking the laugh, like Wallace said it would be like.
Like the anime right wing.
Or bronies.
Or poptamism.

>Or bronies.
i think most bronies start watching mlp purely for the irony of a young man watching a little girl's show. they may genuinely like it eventually but their initial motivation for watching the show is definitely for the sake of irony.

A sizable chunk of them get into simply because they're friends are into it. Most people don't actually decide for themselves what they like and don't like. They look to their peers to see what they are "supposed" to like in order to fit into whatever social group they are a part of. If your social group is punk/goth/emo then that means dressing like a dick and listening to bad music. If it's the "urban-wannabe" social group, then that means listening to shitty hip-hop and saying retarded words like "senpai". If your social group is a bunch cheeto-breath neckbeards, then it means watching anime or mlp. I know it's a cliche point to make, but most people really are automatons.

i've heard plenty of bronies defend mlp and it always sounds loaded with irony.

>it teaches great life lessons
>like the value of friendship yada yada yada

they're doing it for the irony. all of them.

Chaucerian satire and modern nihilistic postmodern irony are two wildly different things.

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