Did we simply transform overnight into a nation of venal assholes? I’d argue that slackers adopted irony not as a pose of hipster cynicism but as a defense against inheriting a two-faced world. When no one—from politicians to pundits—says what he actually means, irony becomes a logical self-inoculation. Similarly, snark, irony’s brat, flourishes in an age of doublespeak and idiocy that’s too rarely called out elsewhere. Snark is not a honk of blasé detachment; it’s a clarion call of frustrated outrage…..
…When we live in a world where professional analysts on TV can be trusted to simply say what they actually believe, then I think we’ll find that snark will start to turn its own volume down…. Yet in snark Denby sees a symptom and calls it a disease.
thank you, ny mag, for getting things right
as a side note, this also functions fairly well as a response to that awkward and asinine adbusters “O NOEZ HIPSTERS” article (i refuse to hunt it down to link again) that’s still making me cringe six months after i was originally subjected to it
(and after all that sincere snarkless intellectual crap, wonkette’s response is also entertaining)
