I received an email today from someone who pointed me to a wikipedia article called “Post-irony“. The entry reads as follows:
Post-irony is a point of view that involves the self-conscious appreciation of what would otherwise be seen as cheesy or ridiculous. One early reference to this mindset is in a 1999 Slate article. The label has also been used to describe fan worship of musician Andrew W.K.
One mainstream use of “post-ironic” was on the O.C., in which one character uses the term to describe herself. Her character only starts using this term upon attending Brown University.
The article is marked for deletion on the grounds of “dictionary definition.” I’m sort of two minds about the pending deletion. On the one hand, it’s kind of cool that wikipedia, completely independently of my own work, has “discovered” postirony. On the other hand, there aren’t many works that develop a sustained analysis of postirony. That’s part of the point of my dissertation. So I’m not going to add anything to the article for now. Thoughts?