earnest aesthetics
Millennials hate them: gen z fights irony poisoning with this one weird trick!
Anyone with the heretical gall to ask an ironist what he actually stands for ends up looking like an hysteric or a prig. And herein lies the oppressiveness of institutionalized irony, the too-successful rebel: the ability to interdict the question without attending to its subject is, when exercised, tyranny. It [uses] the very tool that exposed its enemy to insulate itself. - David Foster Wallace was right: Irony is ruining our culture
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the compulsion to publicly shroud my likes with irony. I like things that are normal and uncool, and I don’t like them as a bit (at least not most of the time) but I do treat these cringey, cheugy interests of mine with an ironic detachment on the internet. For example: during quarantine, a new Twilight book came out, and I made a book club specifically for friends who wanted to read it together, but I treated it as a bit of a joke when asked who would be interested. (Twilight is very bad, but so are lots of other things that people earnestly and publicly love, like funko pops or dairy, and they’re not being ironic about it, and I would argue my thing causes less harm overall than either of the above examples.) I’ve also been struggling to admit how deep down the rabbit hole of Taylor Swift lore I’ve fallen. It’s taken me until my 28th year to listen to her properly, because as a child/teen, I would have been mortified to be caught enjoying her music. Sometimes I still do this bizarre kneejerk dismissal when she comes up in conversation, like oh, I’ve never really listened to her, not my thing. When recently, she has become my thing. Midnights is pretty great. The Eras Tour looks fucking incredible. There’s a conspiracy theory circulating at the moment that she’s releasing a secret memoir this summer, and I kind of want to preorder it just in case. But I have all this shame surrounding liking “mainstream” things, and need to act like it’s a little bit ironic if I have an ounce of doubt about its objective quality or coolness. A lot of that stems from internalized misogyny - you’ll notice that the things I try to distance myself from are traditionally feminine and associated with feelings, ew.
"Direct expression, with no tricks, gimmickry, or irony, has come to be interpreted ironically because the default interpretive apparatus says, 'He can't really mean THAT!' When a culture becomes ironic about itself en masse, simple statements of brutal fact, simple judgments of hate or dislike become humorous because they unveil the absurdity, 'friendliness,' and caution of normal public expression. It's funny because it's true. Honestly. We're all upside down now."
— Chic Ironic Bitterness. R. Jay Magill, Jr. University of Michigan Press, 2007
I have chronic irony poisoning, thanks to growing up in the aughts and 2010s, when irony was nurtured in the hearts of young people by internet culture. North American culture became, as R. Jay Magill claims above, “ironic about itself en masse.” I hate to do the cliché thing here, but I have to trace this particular cultural shift back to 9/11 and the Iraq War, although these waves of disillusionment have been frequent throughout history. Irony has often been adopted on a large scale in response to political and economic circumstances that are so backwards, so contrary to humanity, that all a citizen can do is laugh. This attitude trickles into culture via artists, our interpretive philosopher kings, and this is how we get “shows about nothing” and controversial modern art. Watching the response to 9/11, growing up in its shadow, was fascinating, because we watched people lose faith in their governments so quickly. The war was a sham, the TSA was making us take off our shoes as “security theater,” and the President was a moron. Even in Canada, we were bound to be affected by this.
When I think of irony culture in the aughts and 2010s, I have the strongest memory of a website I read in high school, called yourscenesucks.com. It broke down all the subgenres of hipsters, punks, goths, emos, indies, and more, all with infographics pointing to everything tired and unoriginal about all of these types. At the time I thought it was funny, because there was such a visceral hatred toward hipsters, i.e. anyone trying to do anything “different,” or participate in a subculture. Now I think it’s a fascinating artifact that demonstrates how boring we were, how quick to dismiss someone for indulging in any convention-within-unconventionality. Nowadays when I hear someone talk about “hipsters,” I think that all the “hipsters” I’ve ever met have just been people with hobbies and personal style. That’s it. I mean, I know a lot of people with beards and flannel button-downs and bartending jobs and Blundstones, who show up at The Cap (Fredericton’s designated cool person bar) every Friday like clockwork to see the same local bands play the same sets. But those aren’t the qualities that might make them boring or elitist. If I were to call those people out en masse, which I’m not, I would say that hypothetically, it’s the rich parents and exclusionary, superior attitude that makes people on the outside dislike them. Maybe. But they’re also individuals and most of them are normal, nice people. I think there’s a fine line between hating on hipsters for valid reasons - classism, cultural appropriation, cliqueyness - and just being judgmental out of insecurity. But what do I know, right? Maybe I’m irony deficient, like mobsters who earnestly love The Godfather. Maybe I’m in too deep. I’m the problem, it’s me.
"They don’t see it as a tale of individual moral corruption. They see it as a nostalgia trip to better days for the mob."
— "The Irony of Irony." Jonah Goldber, National Review, April 28, 1999
I’ve gotten way off track. What I actually want to talk about, what I’ve been excited about lately, is a response to irony culture, that I’m mentally calling earnest aesthetics. Gen Z is better than Millennials in so many ways (I was born in 1995, right on the cusp, so I’m tolerable). They’re healthier than any generation before them, smoking and drinking less, more left-leaning, even having less sex (maybe this is just my celibacy-pilled brain, but I think a lot of sex is more harmful than healthy, and less sex hopefully means more meaningful and safe sex, right?). They’re worried about the environment, they’re bombarded with the news 24/7 on their phones, they’re reacting to Trump’s presidency; all the pieces are there to create another irony-poisoned generation. But what I think we’re seeing instead is a swing toward sincerity, authenticity, and earnestness. We’re in a bit of a new age re: self-representation, and we’re passionately embracing personal style and honesty, reflecting genuinely upon who we “really are.”
Take, for example, the beloved new TikTok stars tinyjewishgirl and Myra Magdalen. Their styles are totally fueled by fun, subjectivity, intuitiveness, and personality. I really think they will go down as some of the most influential figures in fashion this decade, because of their impact on Gen Z. And what’s so charming, so engaging about them, is that it’s not a bit. They really go out dressed this way, they live and breathe personal style, and they’re not being ironic about it. It’s refreshing, to people like me, to see genuine, honest-to-god weirdness being pulled off and embraced this way.
I also think we’re in a new age of sincerity when it comes to design. You’re probably noticed that minimalism and corporate aesthetics are out again - no one wants to see Helvetica and little purple cartoon people anymore. What I’m noticing is a rise in popularity in cheesy, corny, positive designs. My favourite example is Online Ceramics’ t-shirt line. A few years ago, no one would buy these designs, thinking they were ugly and corny and outdated. But now, they’re fun and inspiring. Gen Z wants to save the planet, and they’re not interested in stereotypes about only “nerds” or “geeks” caring about these things - what is this, the 80s?
One of my favourite instantiations of this cultural shift has been the new memes. We’re seeing jokes about kissing the homies goodnight, and loving ourselves, and beating depression. And they’re not at anyone’s expense, they’re just nice.
Finally, we’re seeing a rise in interest in being “real,” which I suspect directly inspired the BeReal app. My dear friend Dani, a Gen Z themself, recently described social media to me as “modern scrapbooking,” and I love that. Instagram is inundated with influencers and advertising and posturing and infographics, but these young kids, they just want to be themselves, to share their lives. (I wrote a paper on the commodification of identity via social media in grad school, and while I hate that corporations are profiting off of our humanity, I desperately want to keep looking on the bright side.) Everyone is posting photodumps, filters are a faux-pas, and I daresay we’ve finally stopped posting soulless consumptive images, like a random shot of the inside of an American Apparel store (RIP). It may seem backwards, but I think we’re seeing some humanity begin to shine through on the apps again.
It’s tempting to invoke that classic hipster grievance: I was born in the wrong generation. I, personally, probably wasn’t. I’m grateful to have grown up without a cell phone, but I also thrived in the Tumblr Tens. But I do wish kids had been more accepting when I was young. Maybe I’m just wearing rose-coloured horn-rimmed glasses, but I think things are changing for the better. It’s cool to be sincere about things. Earnest aesthetics are in. People are, maybe, a little less defeated than they ought to be in the wake of Trump - maybe the #MeToo movement and the arrest of Jeffrey Epstein and the socialization of power via social media has given Gen Z a sense of agency. I hope so - and having hope is the best antidote to irony I’ve got.
This is such a fun and introspective read Shan! Go girl give us more!
My favourite entry so far. Great humour yet, still candid. Good read. Thank you for posting.