The trick to this is to accept that some will be that way, but you don’t have to. It’s a choice for which we must all take personal responsibility.

what killed the internet is information overload. in many way no one can have a private or closed space. twitter for example you are bombarded with everyone’s thought on everything and before long you have a lot of information about things you dont care about, and no way to engage properly with just one of those things. you can be vulnerable on the internet, but in a mostly public and algorithmic internet, its gonna be exposed to so many people who will hate that.

This is not a generational shift. The iron dome of irony is a tried and true coping technique for the brutality of teenage culture where the rule of cool rules with an iron fist and being uncool means social death. And what is cool shifts at a moment’s notice, yet uncool is forever. So normies learn to armour themselves by treating everything ironically to pre-empt any whiff of uncool. Because at the very least, it’s never uncool to make fun of something. This carries forward into one’s 20s when some begin to rediscover the coolness of being authentic, sincere, and genuine regardless of what others think. So then you have the reaction of radical acceptance, not yucking others’ yum, respect for others’ interests, etc. GenX had their equivalent, even Boomers. It’s part of growing up. And of course not everyone gets there.

Yep, not a single post of irony on the Internet before zoomers.

A lot of people confuse my arrogance for irony.