There’s been a lot of discourse surrounding the state of irony in popular media. I think this surge in interest about irony — in contradistinction with an interest in being ironic — is related to the perceived death of authenticity in popular media. 

I think it is safe to say that, for some time now, it’s been “in” to be ironic. All of our memes are now ironic — i.e., “she ate,” “it’s giving,” etcetera. Our fashion is deeply ironic, as seen in the fact that it is now apparently cool for privileged, wealthy kids to cosplay the unhoused. Darling, have you seen the Balenciagas? Oh, the horror. Even our politics are ironic. The self-proclaimed anti-government, ultra-capitalist libertarian now administers a bulldozing operation WITHIN the government itself whose very legality is ambiguous. Isn’t it all so ironic? 

For some time, though, it did seem as though we reveled in our irony. Generation Z especially is regarded — both by itself and by the generations encompassing it — as the ironic generation; irony is our currency. Except, it would appear that we’re becoming increasingly tired of it. To my mind, this is probably because irony is always undergirded by something more sinister: nihilism. Nihilism is a state of utter apathy, a belief in nothing. A state of mind in which one detaches oneself from the worldly, interconnected and deeply complex realm of human affairs. 

Nihilists pull away from the world in an effort to emancipate themselves from the supposed inauthentic meaning of it. The world has no inherent meaning, they argue — we impose an artificial significance upon it and trick ourselves into believing that this synthetic significance was there all along. The nihilist sees no sense in imposing meaning onto something that has no meaning to begin with. This trick of the mind, argues the nihilist, is a vain attempt to lull us into discarding the very real fact that we’re merely stardust, nothing truly matters and there is no divine route to our salvation. God is dead on account of our own rationalist inclinations. 

Yet, as Martin Heidegger taught us, nothing is in fact something. Namely the absence of all that is. The world may not actually have meaning, but in our attempt to reconcile with that fact, we create something that looks and feels a whole lot like meaning. To detach oneself from either real or inorganic meaning for the sake of seeing the world for what it really is — being void of meaning — is a taller order than most nihilists are willing to accept. And this is because human beings have an elementary desire for creation and, by extension, for purpose. Detachment in a nihilistic sense is an unsustainable approach to life because it suppresses these desires. 

As anyone with poor self-control (or experience with children) can attest, suppressing desires merely intensifies them. In an effort to suppress them into oblivion, our desires torment us, affecting their revenge of going unfulfilled upon us. For the nihilist, this is not welcome news. It does not surprise me that the fall of nihilism in the zeitgeist is being succeeded by a desperate cry for authenticity. In our detachment from the world of human affairs, we’ve denied ourselves the seriousness with which that world takes us and all that surrounds us. 

To take something seriously is to treat it with dignity and care. Nihilism denies the serious treatment of everything. The nihilist cannot take anything they do or confront seriously. Consequently, they can’t regard culture with genuine interest, earnestly interact with art or engage with politics in a way that creates meaning — which is what politics is, after all. These things — culture, art and politics — are all external to us in the sense that they retain an independence and separateness from us that grants them a kind of self-possession. 

The self is quite a different story. The self is immediate, and in denying themselves the capacity to take anything seriously, the nihilist denies the ability to care for themselves. It is a desire that is deeply animalistic in the sense that it caters to our most fundamental needs. I believe that this is the nihilist’s downfall. Our willingness to stop taking ourselves seriously for the sake of grasping the world in its true, meaningless form has made being nihilistic unsustainable for this generation. Hence, our flock towards authenticity. 

An authentic sense of humor, personality, sense of style; a politics of authenticity. We can see this in popular culture. It is no surprise that the biggest stars in popular music today — Chappell Roan, SZA, Doechii — write deeply personal music, and their audiences embrace it because they’ve been denied this sincerity for so long. When Lola Young sings, “[you] don’t say hello ‘cause I got high again / And forgot to fold my clothes,” we all sing along because we’re all, “too messy,” too high, too forgetful on account of being too high. Young is a genuine reflection of us, and she takes herself — and her desire to “be me” — seriously. When she cries out whether being that real self is “not allowed,” we shout it in unison because we, too, desperately want to express the authenticity of our character. 

The backlash against the insidious microtrend takeover of fashion history is, in part, motivated by its disastrous effects on our planet. But lest you think care for the Earth is the only motivation for our hostility, we’re also sick of microtrends because they have destroyed our capacity for developing for ourselves and expressing to others a personal style. Clothes express what is most private — one’s personality — to members of the public. They bring into the light of day what is hidden behind layers of flesh and blood. Microtrends have disguised the true content of our unique characters by dressing us in exactly the same garments. We no longer appear different from one another; our personalities appear homogenous. And there’s nothing an overgrown teenager despises more than being robbed of what individuality they’d like to think they have. 

On both the left and the right of the political spectrum, those dominating the stage are politicking authenticity. Say what you will about President Donald Trump, but one thing you cannot deny is that the man is unapologetically himself — and that is exactly what his supporters admire about him. After being presented with politician after politician who spoke of change but delivered little to none of it, the masses grew weary. And so, when presented with someone who was so obviously uninterested in performing a cookie-cutter persona, they flocked to him. Likewise, it’s no surprise that on the left, a rising superstar wears a black Carhartt windbreaker for his official Congressional portrait. That is who John Fetterman is — a rugged, no-nonsense kind of man. In publicly expressing who they are, these figures grant the public the chutzpah to express their real selves too. 

These shifts in our culture, more generally, are manifestations of the pendulum swinging. 

Toward what exactly that pendulum is swinging is unclear. The last instance of mass nihilism — if we can call it that — immediately preceded the Second World War. The Dadaists presented the public with art that mocked them. Marcel Duchamp offered the public a urinal … Was this art according to the masses? The Dadaists deliberately prompted the public to question the superficiality of the world of human affairs. Yet, much to their chagrin, a culture of authenticity is not exactly what followed. Indeed, fascism and the dropping of atomic bombs are what followed — not to mention the witch-hunt of the Red Scare in America. Eternal return … Perhaps Friedrich Nietzsche was right all along. 

But for our sake, I hope not. Hannah Arendt presents us with an alternative. That of Amor Mundi — to love the world. It may be truly meaningless, random and utterly devoid of significance. But it is ours. 

We should care for this world because it gives us the opportunity to create something. We ought to regard culture with real interest because it concerns us. We should earnestly interact with art because it is beautiful, and we should be so lucky to recognize the good in the world. And we should engage seriously with politics because politics is how we create a meaning for the space that is shared between us.

To irony, I say, “It was nice performing you, we have learned much from you — but all things must pass.” To a future that we all take fervent interest in, I say, “l’chaim.”