David Foster Wallace on how Humor and Irony Ruined America

David Foster Wallace had many prophetic visions for America, but the most on-point one was his analysis of how humor and irony would ruin America.
Discover over 100 of David Foster Wallace's favorite books and the three books he wrote with by his side below
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[@chaseritchey924]

“There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke” -Bob Dylan

[@spiker1923]

among us

[@iuseitToo]

​@@spiker1923Good One!

[@mutnazrub8180]

I graduated high school a couple of years ago and the irony culture was insane. All of my friends would just sit around making jokes and parroting the latest memes. If something serious was going on in someone's life they either hid it or wrapped it up in humor so that they didn't make anyone uncomfortable. We never stepped into discomfort to deal with serious things in a productive way, instead we stayed comfortable and stagnant. Growing up inundated with this, I now have an internal resistance against sincerity. But lately I've yearned to sincerely share things that I care about. I like watching movies and I've been making reviews on Letterboxd to get my thoughts out there. It's a small step but it's a step. Though the irony culture there, with all the one liner joke reviews, puts high school to shame.

[@davegairdner2000]

Would you like to share your Letterboxd?

[@mikelpelaez]

I'm guilty of doing that with the wizard of Oz (making an stupid one liner and putting it on Letterboxd). I should probably try to do good reviews too, I did some for anime, so I think I already have some of the skills.

[@rsaylors]

“Irony is the song of a bird that has come to love its cage-people always quote this truism as if it were the clinching point of an argument about the limits of irony, but name me the bird among us that is not caged and isn’t at least half in love with its cage.” - David Shields

[@Snarflelocker]

This dude is a monster, you're ferocious, sir. And thanks for all the hard work.

[@FrancisGo.]

Irony is good when it's original, but it's become a way of keeping everyone within a particular egotistical lens. You can't even read a book in public to have a cheap means of getting out of the house. It's considered a dogwhistle of some kind, worthy of contempt. But if you sit reading on your phone, you fit into yet another category worthy of scorn. And you can't people watch either. Everything is cringe. Being a tourist is also cringe. 😆

[@battleb0ng420]

i heard someone say, i forget who, that cringing is a mental disorder and i think that's at least half-true

[@FrancisGo.]

@@battleb0ng420 Another one I forgot is writing in public. Family Guy spoofed that. 😆

[@ariekanibalie]

And DFW warned against this long before the alt-right weaponized irony to spread their message of hatred. In the later 90s, there was a group of Dutch and Flemish comedians and cartoonists who were concerned about this exact thing. They formed the 'Bond Tegen Humor', the 'Association Against Humor' to criticise the uses and abuses of humor and irony in commercial or political contexts. It was very tongue in cheek, where they would give interviews and press conferences and discuss the matter entirely straight-faced, which - ironically! - made it extremely funny. Especially because it angered so many people and I think they even received death threats from the same kind of folk who a decade or two later would start frothing over 'woke' killjoys taking away their right to enjoy racist stereotypes in popular media and the like.

[@chucknorthington121]

Dude coming in here spitting your toxicity. Nobody cares about your politics.

[@RJGilman1967]

"Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities." ~ M.Twain You put up great stuff. Thanks. Signed, Late-end, now knows he doesn't know it all, baby boomer fully entrenched in the proximity of death. Peace.

[@Thurnishaley6969]

You can also utilize humor to give easier access to deeper darker topics by disarming people. Someone laughing at a "dark joke" is a way of acknowledging truth. Its catharsis. The key is to not stop at the joke. The characters need to work towards what is redeemable

[@XOXO______]

I love your message and think there is a problem when you chopped the interview here to fit more into your point. Agree with the fact that irony has been excessively used (mostly in the US). It is a symptom and problematic coping mechanism in a very performative narcissistic culture in a very broken society. Also there’s a growing trend of humor escapism. Have been thinking about this lately and forgot this Wallace interview. In reality good comedians are geniuses and most brilliant people in history had a good sense of humor. As Wallace pointed out in other moment of this interview, there are different kinds and uses of humor. I’m Mexican and can say in our culture we have a very good sense of humor that most of the time is sincere and not ironic (is noticeable the contrast with the US youth psyche) but most of it is escapism from the crude realities of a postcolonial third world country as there’s a hopeless sense of limited agency in front of that.

[@leofiskars]

Yesssh, I understand the message of the video, but I also feel that humor, derived from a social web of shared experiences and associations, is so deeply ingrained into our nature that, imo, it is the essential trait that recognizes the truth of our mutual humanity. I haven't read a good book that wouldn't recognise the absurdity of the world on some level, be it content, or form, or just in use of timing, art of comedy. Anyhow... thanks for the great videos Ian!

[@apokalupsishistoria]

“The American people don’t read.” CIA director Allen Dulles

[@kentjensen4504]

Right on. Malcom X famously said "Black and White, unite and fight!" I would amend that to "Left and Right, unite and fight!" Even though I am technically a Social Democrat, to the extent I bother self-applying any political label at all, most of my views would get me decribed as right wing today. But I don't believe any specific economic model or political scheme will make much of a difference. What will make a difference is ethics and spirituality. A Communist or Fascist state with an awakened population would do better than our current smugly ignorant populaton. Best of all, in my view, would of course be an enlightened populaton in soem variant of classical Western free society. I'll take Jeffrey Sachs over almost anyone on the right, and he was Bernie Sanders' economic advistor (before Bernie sold out).

[@Thurnishaley6969]

a fascist state with an awakened population? So Nazism? wtf are you talking about lmao

[@2006ToyotaTundra]

I'm about waist deep in your videos at this point, you rock!

[@Vgallo]

Interesting take on gatekeeping, but it sounds partly true, not all gatekeeping isn’t always beneficial

[@WriteConscious]

Agreed!

[@countdublevay7327]

Wow man. "Irony is the song of a bird that learned to love its cage." How cool is that? How convicting.

[@dingleberrysnigglefritz]

I wrote it in my journal as soon as I heard it. So profound to me.

[@Anonymous-ju9bg]

Just because it’s poetic-sounding doesn’t mean it’s also true

[@sunnykobe3210]

For the algorithm ❤💯👍🏽 I don’t think you took one breath in that whole video! Haha great content. I’ll be more conscious and do my part.

[@Motoroil20xx]

I don't think that this is a new paradigm, people have always expressed humor through irony. I think that the problem is there is a lack of vulnerability and sincerity in behavior and speech. Irony is a good tool to use when situations are forced upon people to face reality in an inescapable sense. I think a lot of this is attributed to the hidden counterbalance of our gift of high speed information distribution. The interconnectedness has (ironically) resulted in individualization and this is difficult to contend with when we are able to partially or wholly replace genuine social dynamics. It's easy to find a simulacra of connectivity and commonality amongst social media, but the drawback is that it's always behind a degree of separation, the screen being a replacement of community. It's what we give up for the comfort of our technological advancements, which we sometimes confuse for societal progress. I think that it's a net good (no pun intended) to have the abilities to communicate so quickly and easily, but to swing the pendulum back toward wider human affirmation, we need to try to be more sincere and willing to be vulnerable and accepting of the possibility of, as the current vernacular states, "being cringe".

[@devinbartley5768]

Do you have any videos about Eastern Orthodox?

[@zumzaa3995]

You're greatest video I've seen. Though I'm not exactly sure how to get a young generation of nihilists to take anything with a semblance of spirituality seriously. That might be our greatest challenge that we need specific strategies to overcome. Love you.

[@ChristinaRubinoMusic]

Diggin ur channel! Subscribed.

[@dingleberrysnigglefritz]

Fantastic work, my good man.

[@zacnewford]

Thoughts on metamodernism? DFW was a pioneer of new sincerity. I don’t think there’s any going back. To reach enlightenment today one must pass through the ironic mainstream or your sincerity would be ridiculed out of existence.

[@Thurnishaley6969]

the way forward has always been through sincerity. without it we are no longer human. i dont think we are going to fully abdicate our common humanity just yet

[@jasonsanders8091]

You make great points! Serious Buddhist monks, at least in Theravada, follow "Right Speech" which includes precepts like always being straight forward in speech (so no irony, no sarcasm, no frivolous jokes etc). And Orthodox Christian monks follow the commandments of Christ which mean you are asked to also be plain and simple in speech, not be opinionated, not over talk, not speak for the sake of speaking. Staying in silence for long periods allows you to come down into your heart, and when you do give someone a word, it will be from your heart, and be of benefit to them!! As Neil Postman said in his book, we're being amused to death, overwhelmed with information.

[@TheJollyMisanthrope]

Irony, the Gen X specialty.

[@skooptywooop1030]

You can have problems with Wendigoon, but he was the reason I started reading McCarthy after putting it off forever. I was initially a, no country for old men fan which is ironic, because i wouldn't be here otherwise.

[@Postmailer]

Write ‘Jolly’ Conscious

[@homagetv4481]

Great breakdown

[@TeDuffour]

Thank you for bringing True Curiosity to the young.

[@Ernesto_the_Caffiend]

Silence is sexy

[@jamescareyyatesIII]

When I was an artist in NYC I only hungout with South American and Italian artists because they weren't ironic . It's an interesting question why America is more ironic than the rest of the world. I know that it's impossible for capitalism to exist without irony. Irony really makes the whole thing go because irony is the spackle which holds the wall of capitalist power together.

[@devinbartley5768]

I'm curious for you to expand on that. Can you give some concrete examples of why irony enables capitalism? I can't think of any myself.

[@YvesThePoet]

Well said

[@bryandraughn9830]

I agree man. Nobody wants to email their representative, start a petition, or anything like participation. Just vote and bitch. The system wasn't designed to work that way. The mess we're looking at is OUR FAULT. "Ohh nooo! It's everyone else's fault!" I mean, what are the odds of that? "I'm much too busy to get involved." Yeah, it's only your freedom at stake. Not important. For Christ's sake man, there's an app you can download and it has all of the issues that your rep is scheduled to vote on, their email address, everything. It's not hard to communicate with our elected and appointed officials. Nobody wants to do it. The blame game is more fun I guess.

[@peterconner1766]

They weren't smiling because of exposure time. Just sayin'. Good video though.

[@cesarcampos8746]

Yeah people did mature faster and had the capability to do so, and Irony and humor are wayyy too much now, but yehq theres pics of those old timey people smiling and laughing etc

[@relight6931]

Make the absurd your lover. When things happen, bad things, over which you will have no control, and they surely will, you either drown with this unlucky traumatic event, that you didn't deserve in any kind of way, or you use this simple coping mechanism.. Overuse and it being waaaay to present in American culture that then spreads over the world, I do see as a problem. Balance as always is important. Neither is irony as sweet, when you search for it actively, or the laugh is genuine, when you laugh at literally everything like a damn hiyena..

[@geordiejones5618]

DFW predicted the cope, but it's also always been around. The thing that he was getting at was our collective use and growing understanding of what has traditionally been a literary and political tool, the use of extremes and of contrasts especially that drive home the best irony, that's emblematic of a shift in not just American culture but human culture. I completely disagree that we are devolving. We are MORE conscious of how many things impact us and it's influenced everything. The call to action has ALWAYS been bullshit. Very few generations sacrifice what it takes to create real change, because the cost is everything you know and love covered in blood and rubble. If you think you can create change today without a revolution you are truly just as deep in the cope as DFW predicted. We all fucking are. I don't wanna hold my dead child for the sake of a regime change, because that's the only thing that really changes. I don't care if the Pentagon announces tomorrow that DC is on permanent lockdown and to await further updates. I could not care less about society at large and I'm not saying that anyone should want to feel that way, I just don't see a reality where the billions of us that are alive today can fundamentally rewrite the infrastructure of culture and society. Good fucking luck.

[@nicholasbarrett3018]

What video did you criticize wendigoon? I think his blood meridian video is pretty surface level. Mountains of books is the channel for people who want substance.

[@bsure4]

no you can not see it ( trauma ) on their faces. They are posing in the manner of the time.

[@Vgallo]

Joe Biden has actually made wise policy decisions, yeah he’s not a great talker but his policy is really quite good and I used to be a trump supporter

[@youngwerther35]

Thats why tolstoi didnt liked that much of shakespeare. He tought shakespeare didnt take serious some things like politics or religion.

[@AleksandarBloom]

And yet Tolstoy had the dumbest set of theories and beliefs in his century and shoved them in his novels.

[@youngwerther35]

Why they are dumb?

[@leopercara3477]

​@@AleksandarBloomTell us you haven't read Tolstoy without saying it.

[@JamesBongo]

irony is a way to hide. Being sincere you expose yourself. You invite criticism. But if you talk about everything ironically you cannot be held accountable for anything. Your nothing but a criticism of something else.

[@matthelion]

Your videos have sooooo many fucking ads

[@drunken87]

The cult begins ;)