>everything has to be a meme
>any attempt at sincerity is just being "corny"
>most media made nowadays is filled with whedonesque dialogue and absurd levels of snark
>All discussions about every topic online are ironic with people looking to get "owns" instead of actually engaging with each other
>Insincere clicktivism everywhere. People regularly trying to ruin lives over topics they know nothing about.
He was right. We now live in irony hell.

>>24484721 (OP)
It's subversion and I agree it is hell.
However, the snark and irony in conversation is usually a shit test in my experience. If I can show some diligence and show I actually know or have experienced something I am often met with genuine curiosity. I think people are just so used to grifters that sardonic humor has become a defense. It isn't perfect, but it works.

>>24484721 (OP)
jakposters are irony-poisoned down to the marrow of their bones.

>>24484730
It's no longer a subversion when it becomes the norm.

>>24484721 (OP)
Paradoxically, 4chan is the only place I feel like I can be sincere.

how many times do you need to make this thread
>>24451595
>>24482546

Now if only we could get the esoteric Kunt and the jesus poster in here

bump

>>24484721 (OP)
Can you imagine what he would have thought about the world we live in now? He was shitting himself and ultimately roped over fucking television and Rush Limbaugh level programming. You can’t go fucking 5 minutes without seeing a meme or hearing a reference to one nowdays. He’d shoot himself on live television.

>>24486598
>hangs himself in 2008
>same year as the first MCU movie
He would have ended up in a straightjacket if he got to witness the total Whedonization of media

>>24486612
He just woulda killed himself later. He was a frail, little, career academic.

>>24484721 (OP)
>>any attempt at sincerity is just being "corny"

My attempt at an intelligent comment is sincerity is viewed as "corny", while people desperately attach themselves to irony, is because the average person hasn't changed in the regard that they're still deeply afraid of being an authentic person. It's a security blanket. The average person cannot handle being emotionally vulnerable or otherwise exposing themselves in a way that might lead to a more personalized attack or their "true" feelings being mocked.
Ironically, people are quite robust; they excel at dealing with physical trauma, they're great at working through material problems, they're great at adapting to new lows, a person gets paralyzed and they'll settle into a new normal in 4-6 months. A person's ability to naturalize physical tragedy is astounding, but we fucking suck at dealing with mental, or emotional, issues, so here we are. And I don't profess or even a single moment that any of the modern culture surrounding "mental health awareness" has improved conditions - if anything it's added a kind of fashionable context to the negative. It was simply easier to normalize feeling bad than to actually fix it or do anything about it. "Everybody is a mess, so it's actually fine for me to be a mess and not do anything about it. That's normal."

I think in some way this is also why people have a deep resentment for people who're openly passionate about something and/or anyone even remotely unusual or eccentric.

Personally, I embrace radical self-revelation.

>>24486617
I don't like this because I agree with this.

>>24484721 (OP)
Are you the same person who posted the
> Why do online spaces seem trapped in layers of ironic distance, making sincerity feel risky or uncool?
threads?

>>24484721 (OP)
This is a stupid idea only a pretentious idiot would think is important. He never had a single good idea about anything, however he was a decent writer.

You live in a cynical age, thats all

>>24486625
this is just another way of saying that there are exceptional people and normal people but you make it seem like there's anything anyone can do about it except slowly spend their life coping and accepting it and it doesn't help that media uses it as propaganda even to children, to promote consumerism and one has to wonder whether societies whose individuals knew their place in the social hierarchy and in life functioned better because the only thing this notion of freedom promotes is unbridled capitalism, a childish dream that an 80 iq brute could become the next einstein, if only he consumed more slope, if only he subscribed to this and that...

>>24486625
this is just another way of saying that there are exceptional people and normal people but you make it seem like there's anything anyone can do about it except slowly spend their life coping and accepting it and it doesn't help that media uses it as propaganda even to children, to promote consumerism and one has to wonder whether societies whose individuals knew their place in the social hierarchy and in life functioned better because the only thing this notion of freedom promotes is unbridled capitalism, a childish dream that an 80 iq brute could become the next einstein, if only he consumed more slop, if only he subscribed to this and that...

>>24486598
The mere concept of infinite scrolling would have killed him instantly

>>24484721 (OP)
Wallace thought that showing sentiments was inherently embarrassing and that he needed "lean in" to it in order to be "genuinely human"
His sensibility was embarrassing
Noble sentiments have nothing to be ashamed of
I think he's on to something in that the media environment makes people self-referring in a way that short-circuits us--which he perhaps got from McLuhan ...
But "Irony" is hardly "the problem", irony just means complexity and is one of the main styles in literature (the other being the naive or supernatural)

>>24487844
Infinite scrolling seems to be pretty similiar to just sitting in front of a TV while it plays endless garbage.
In fact, I think a lot of endless scrolling happens while the person is sitting in front of a TV that is playing endless garbage.

>>24487863
It’s worse

>>24486617
The times themselves are frail.

>>24484721 (OP)
If he felt this way about the world in the 90s and the 2000s, I can't imagine how much today's world would have broken him.

>>24485152
It is a subversion of what was. And it will be subverted.

>>24489801
Gaddis, too. Dude was constantly seething about Reagan. Imagine his reaction to Trump, not to mention all the AI shit going on.

>>24485272
he is right. he is trying to teach us his ways.

thank you for posting it again op, I do not want to be the man I was before seeing it.

These threads are what he posts.

>>24486598
Rush Limbaugh was introduced to me by my dad in 1994 when I was 12. Give a decade and a half and I spiraled off the deep end.

>>24486598
>>24489801
He also felt that there was too much information being thrown at you at once every day. Now, it's ten times worse.

obviously
but there is no solution or escape, which is why killed himself

>>24492747
A hundred times worse. As bad as TV was, it was at least confined to a location, as was the internet in its early days, and you could get away from it by just not being in the one room of your house that it existed. You truly cannot escape the ubiquity of phones now, barring moving into a Tibetan monastary to become a monk.

>>24491733
Elaborate

>>24484733
DAVID FOSTER WALLACE IS NOT A BASEDJAK YOU PIECE OF SHIT POSTER

>>24489801
I have the same thoughts about many authors.

Nietzsche was raging about liberalism in the 1800s...

>>24486617
What's the difference to you? The world keeps going, and getting shittier.

Ummm, the alienation of post-modern irony is right behind me isnt it? Yikes

>>24492808
Every time I use my phone, there's an urge and a voice screaming at me in the back of my mind to throw it away and do something different and more productive.

>>24486625
A little rambling (actually I’m not one to judge, my posts are often even worse kek), but good points.
Also re: people being afraid of emotional vulnerability and sincerity, since they can get emotionally wounded by others over it, and, on the other hand, also all the therapyspeak and therapy-culture today (some of which, as you noted, also seems to normalize neurosis):
I think you make some good points there again, but what I’ve noticed is also something beyond even that.
>It was simply easier to normalize feeling bad than to actually fix it or do anything about it. "Everybody is a mess, so it's actually fine for me to be a mess and not do anything about it. That's normal."
This applies with some people, I’ve noticed it seems common especially in the younger generations, with their idea that practically everyone being mentally ill today in some way is just a fact of life, but there’s also an opposite tendency from other people which also can suck. And this is, if you share something emotionally vulnerable or some trauma or some mental issue you have, some people weaponizing it to criticize you or attack you for not dealing with your mental health efficiently enough. “You’re suffering from anxiety/depression over XYZ, or this or that stressor or trauma in your life? Well, you should just instantly fix it! You need to [exercise/seek therapy/get on meds or drugs/drink less/etc.]”. Basically, showing any of this vulnerability is weaponized by some people to paint you as a failure or as not doing enough. Or, “Think about how other people have it so much worse.”

Even with the best of intentions, it can be a little wounding. It’s a paradox I’ve noted. Don’t want to turn this into some shitty gender-war /pol/ thread, but some people talk about how “men have to open up more and not be afraid of being emotionally vulnerable”, “there’s a male mental health crisis and we need to be more open about our mental health”, etc. And yet, when men do open up, especially to close loved ones or romantic partners, it’s a common experience to get stuff like the above thrown at them; or, even worse, someone like a girlfriend keeping it as ammo and then later bringing it up in a fight or argument to wound you as much as she can in the heat of the moment. This isn’t even relevant to DFW anymore lol. And actually it’s just an extension of what you said with:
>The average person cannot handle being emotionally vulnerable or otherwise exposing themselves in a way that might lead to a more personalized attack or their "true" feelings being mocked

>>24493798
>“You’re suffering from anxiety/depression over XYZ, or this or that stressor or trauma in your life? Well, you should just instantly fix it! You need to [exercise/seek therapy/get on meds or drugs/drink less/etc.]”. Basically, showing any of this vulnerability is weaponized by some people to paint you as a failure or as not doing enough. Or, “Think about how other people have it so much worse.”
Very common among women toward men, my mother did the same to me

>>24493798
So it’s again a paradoxical situation. You either have some people, like some Zoomers, normalizing mental illness a lot and going, “Yeah, we’re all fucked, what can we do about it?”, or people using it to attack you. Neither feel very helpful. With this being the case, I’m not surprised that many people, maybe especially men, feel it better to clam up their emotions and mental health issues, keep them inside, and just do practical things to deal with them, from the healthier (exercising, getting some sport or hobby to take their mind off it) to the less healthy (self-medicating, alcohol and drugs). Or something in between like workaholicism, constant work-work-work, busy-busy-busy, no time to slow down and stop and think or let the emotions rise back up. I think that’s intertwined with the famous Protestant work ethic (sociologist Max Weber) that’s been a huge influence in capitalist Western culture, particularly from America and then spreading to other Westernized cultures. This is often tied with looking down on others who aren’t so “busy busy busy, no time to think!”, as well as on fields deemed “impractical” or “useless”, the arts, philosophy, literature, higher culture generally.

With this constellation of factors, I’m not surprised that people in modern industrialized society are going increasingly whacko. And also that lots of irony and dark humor are more and more in vogue as coping-mechanisms, including this morphing into mockery of others and various sincere sentiments, whether online or in popular media, TV shows, film and the like.

>>24493798
Zoomers are deathly terrified of anyone seeing them being their true selves.

>>24494306
That was also true of Millennials and also generation gaping is gay

You guys always talk about "sincere sentiments" and being "emotionally vulnerable" but what does that look like? And how are you mocked for it?
What's one sentiment you've shared that led to mockery?
Give one (1) example

You have to be Chad physically and then you can be Authentic
In this era, of 100 years into Feminism and 80 into Pseudo Global Capitalism Cabal freakshow, Physical Appearances open doors that Hard Work never can. Thus; if you want to be "authentic" to yourself as a former basement stuffed animal loving autist you best be able to bench 2pl8 or roon and do pullups and dress well and smell good and have a non bitch job.
Hey just kidding. Il accept you. No homo. But authenticity is in rare supply do to the many deliberate divides we live within here in the Global Zionist West.

Youtube was better when it was full of cringe but since shit like
https://youtu.be/nCZs29IAu3c?si=eWD7-K5G-VAcdM94

instead of the distance, irony, corporate bullshit we have now.

>>24494677
but sincere*

>>24494514
>Give one (1) example
A man crying.

>>24494514
>Men showing emotions
>Emotional moments getting undercut with quips

>>24494514
Whenever I'm on social media and I talk in a way that isn't ebonics or an ironic, detached way, I get accused of talking like sephiroth or an anime villain.

>>24486625
I remember having my first experience with this a while ago when I had first started going to university after moving from a small country town. I was walking around and talking to two of my classmates when we passed by a fairground and I naively said "Wow I've always wandered what a fairground was like!". They both immediately staggered and stopped and turned to me with wide eyes: "You've never been to a fairground before?!?!" and in that moment I knew that I had fucked up because this had happened before; everything is going really well until people find out I have lived under a rock and then they laugh at me for being a hick. But they didn't laugh at me. One of them said "That's awesome, you are going to love this!" and then they bought all three of us front row seats and one of every kind of fairground snack even though we were all pretty broke and they really didn't have that much more money than I did. Anyways, that was the first time bulnerability has ever really payed off for me and I have never forgotten it.

>>24484721 (OP)
I watched this little YouTube lecture on the 4 eras or layers of irony model or whatever and it interestingly said that on the 4th level people use ironic language to say real ideas or something of the sort and the internet is on that level. also I think he mentioned people constantly going back to a sort of base level of person no matter what so they can constantly keep the momentum going. Where even if someone learns something new and is changed for it the next thread they’re back and even in other threads they have contradictory beliefs that they all passionately argue for. But that could’ve been from something else idk
I probably butchered it completely but here’s the vid
https://youtu.be/x46pRjzzMak?si=besrqnZGiAq293RZ

>>24486625
>And I don't profess or even a single moment that any of the modern culture surrounding "mental health awareness" has improved conditions - if anything it's added a kind of fashionable context to the negative.
I remember this vid of a woman going to a mental ward for depression or some shit when she sees the other crazy people she’s almost shocked and is like “damn there’s actual crazy people in here”. And despite being all about mental health and all that she still sees the mentally ill as the other and didn’t learn to actually empathize with them or think of or treat her own problems in a realistic manner. I feel like this video is a good example of what you’re saying.

>>24484721 (OP)
this man is just a pussy and ironically his constant reminder at his insecurities being prodded at meant he would never create anything "sincere" in his entire life.

>>24484730
extremely true. if you show someone a drop of sincerity, 9 times out of 10 they'll drop the irony and engage with you honestly. (only really talking about real life interactions. online don't bother)

white boys itt failing at basic socialization, i didn't know /lit/ was this sensitive

>>24484721 (OP)
4chan culture has a solution to this by making insults so common place that they lose their effect. To even attempt to win a argument here you must be able to wholly refute your opponent. To put him to shame by simply calling him a tranny won't work because we all are trannies here.

>>24497452
this isn't exclusive to 4chan, it's how normal men socialize, by busting each other's balls at every turn, but women have convinced modern men into becoming sensitive (soibois) who take offense at everything, it's even more surprising that dfw played sports and couldn't connect that experience to the rest of society

>>24484721 (OP)
>any attempt at sincerity is just being "corny"
I don't think zoomers and millennials are ironic when they whine about being depressed. Feminists are not ironic when they whine about the culture of rape. Trumpists unironically worship Trump and Israel. Antifa unironically hates conservatives. Jews unironically despise goyim. And so on. Not everyone is a snobby post-ironic nihilistic intellectual like it was in the 1990s. Plus the economic decline, people ironically whined about their soulless lives in cubicle offices and superficiality and consumerism back then, and how they are constantly bored, because they could afford to be that way, now they wish they had a steady desk job that pays well.

>>24497507
Modern media consumption is designed around cynicism. The executives who greenlight these sorts of things aren't doing this because they hate their media properties. They're doing it because sincerity isn't as cost effective.

You make a shitty film/show but give it a cynical tone, and the you get to use the excuse that it being shitty is part of the tone. If it becomes a hit, you get a bunch of idiots defending it as "making a statement" and it's a flop you flip the script and say "we're sorry it was a rushed product caused by XYZ." Compare that to a sincere or earnest product, those are ride and die. The Black Cauldron and Treasure Planet are evidence of that. They were sincere products that failed (and if you look closer they failed because of executive meddling which is a look executives want even less of)

The Qwipism of the MCU was developed entirely because of this mindset. Nothing is serious. Nothing is sincere. Be cynical. Be cruel. Nothing has value. Consume product because you risk missing out if you don't. That's what these modern companies want. They want junkfood for your soul because nobody swears off a junkfood because of one bad bag of chips, but one bad lobster and suddenly people start saying they have a Shellfish allergy. They want your anger, your apathy or blind consumption. If you hate these films and what Disney's production you need to go out of your way not to consume their products and convince people to watch other stuff not because Disney is bad, but because the other stuff is better. Disney can spin you calling their products shit to bait people with FOMO, and losing one sale is a drop in the bucket if you don't go out of your to convert others.

As for social media, it's very much the same, people aren't sincere in their beliefs, they'll simply say whatever in order to get that self righteous endorphin high. You're retarded if you don't think that irony is still around. It's just taken a different form. Culturally, we are probably in the most ironic time in human history, largely due to the internet and social media. I wouldn't say you live under a rock, but your fixation on negative political events has blinded you to how irony has completely saturated our culture.

>>24497520
>Compare that to a sincere or earnest product, those are ride and die.
I get what you're saying but then there is this and the people like Critical Drinker whos whole criticism is based around the idea that the people wants simple sincere media language.

I'm 30 years old so I don't know if I'm just shaped by this insincerity culture but I find that offline it's mostly fine.
The past two years I've been online much less due to getting married and starting a family. This leaves very little time to really dick around on the internet. The media I engage with is not ironic, I pick what I want to watch and I would never put on something like MCU.
I actually think people irl very much appreciate a sincere person. I've always been someone who puts on a mask but from about 25 onwards I dropped doing that and people react well to honesty.

If you're looking to get away from this culture the answer is obviously to get offline. The internet is not made for sincere people, you might find pockets of that but on the whole forget about it.

Now this has the effect of cutting yourself off from 'mainstream' culture which you can see as isolating. But I think it's much preferable than engaging in the slop. You're not making your world smaller by getting offline, you're just trading in huge amounts of useless distractions for more genuine relationships in real life.

I'll also add I'm not American so maybe it's more of an issue there, but in Europe/the Caribbean I don't see it outside the internet.

>>24497821
>I'm not American so maybe it's more of an issue there
That explains it, in America sincerity is met with mockery at best and actively using it against you at worst. Any attempt to escape the internet is pointless because people act exactly as they do on the internet.

>>24497982
If that's true it makes me wonder, how would the internet look like without american influence?
The idea of a great firewall like China has doesn't even sound all that bad.

>i'm an autist who is insufficiently socialized >unable to discern non verbal cues
>or extract people's true intentions
>therefore, i label that as insincere and ironic
itt

>i'm an autist who is insufficiently socialized
>unable to discern non verbal cues
>or extract people's true intentions
>therefore, i label that as insincere and ironic
>as if the world has ever been different in regards to people wanting to hide their true intentions
itt

>>24498155
This is some insane projection. Especially considering people have been complaining about exactly what I posted in the OP for years now.

>>24498173
You can complain all day about it but it won't change the fact that most humans are inherently insincere in their communication and you expecting that to change is what's the actual problem. People have been complaining about this sort of thing in clay tablets, from the times of gilgamesh. What's actually happened is that instant gratification has made it easy to always expect a certain level of understanding and when you don't get, you complain that the world has become insincere.

>>24484721 (OP)
always has been. Read some of the oldschool satires from Swift, Wilde, Renaissance playwrights, 20th cen polemicists. Irony just spread to the masses. You can't put the toothpaste back in the tube. Forcing sincerity is like trying to force oneself to believe in Santa again, except even more cringe because you're trying to awaken a vague attitude, not make a concrete sincere statement.

And sincerity works perfectly fine when there's some personal authority behind your convictions, and you're willing to run social risks by stating them (it's usually rewarded). DFW was a fragile personality that probably daydreamed of being a leader type and couldn't do it.

>>24498209
>DFW was a fragile personality that probably daydreamed of being a leader type and couldn't do it.
I think it's because he witnessed first hand the rise of tv creating instant gratification. He was born in an era where it directly affected him compared to boomers who never really grew up with it. I'm old enough to remember the moniker idiot box being used around in the nineties because parents had come around to the fact that tv use was becoming harmful to children and adults.

>>24498192
>People not liking something and wanting that to change is a problem

>https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2025/fine-books-and-manuscripts-part-2/wallace-david-foster-a-highly-intimate-collection?locale=en

holy shit a collections of dfw's personal letters are up for auction and not a single person has bid on them at the starting price of $35,000! is it over for dfw? has his relevance declined now that no one cares about the danger effects of television nor wants to be constantly harangued about "sincerity"? will /lit/'s faithful dfw thread making stan bid on this wonderful collection? surely someone who makes mopey threads about a dead postmodern author is going to be the kind successful fellow with 35k to spare? check out this sample from one letter:

>[I] was gratified to learn that my letter had found you, courtesy of W.A.S.T.E. and the indomitable Trystero community of letter-deliverers (Pynchon has the story on all this in “The Crying of Lot 49” which I recommend highly to you as a cool and short thing for a cool and short guy to read)

oh shit dfw endorsed tcol49 as cool and short while simultaneously dunking on manlets! the auction closes in a half hour, bid now!

>>24498249
no way, someone just bid on it for 40k! lmao

>>24498252
That was me

>>24498249
skimming some of these letters i didn't realize dfw smoked so much weed, in his honor i will chow some edibles tonight!

pierceday.metalabel.com/aphone

>>24484721 (OP)
Wait until you realize that this mindset isn't restricted to the Internet and is how most normalfags conduct IRL conversations.

>>24484721 (OP)
Everything you speak in the postmodern world is a pastiche of meme-speak and quotes. Literally almost everything. Next time you're out, notice how people (especially millenials and zoomers) actually talk. I do this, too, and I didn't even realize it. So yes, Wallace was 100% right.

>>24484721 (OP)
he is genuinely lucky he died before AI it would have driven him insane

I have thinking these days about this time and he was right, I hate internet man. Everyone pretends to be something they aren't just to fit in. And the irony, sarcasm and insults are fine to a point but when discussions disolves and gets absorbed by hate of people who don't even know each other it's depressing. Repulsive.

>>24484721 (OP)
>>any attempt at sincerity is just being "corny"
is this good or bad

>>24487863
It’s similar to TV, but you wouldn’t say it’s been tuned to be as addictive as possible, with everything perfectly min maxed to keep you watching forever.

That kind of thing really only applies to (American) news, which we all know are just straight up designed to suck you in with rage bait politics or nonstop fear mongering.

If we take tiktok as an example, is basically designed to be like a slot machine. You don’t always get a “win”, in this case that being a good video, but that’s the point. Throwing in some bad or boring ones actually makes the scrolling more addictive than if it just gave you good content. It’s all been engineered to keep you scrolling in perpetuity.

>>24500050
Where the fuck did my Mikkelsen pic go >:(

>>24493735
I'm the same exact way. Whenever I use my smartphone in public I get a sense of shame/humiliation. I would just turn off my phone entirely and keep it in my bag if it weren't for everybody in my life demanding to be in contact with me 24/7/365.

>>24486598
Dfw would have killed himself twice

>>24485180
ikr

>gets married
>kills himself
Makes you think

>>24501358
just don't give into the demand. the freedom and dignity of refusing that insane convention is a great thing. grow up mate

>>24484721 (OP)
>most media made nowadays is filled with whedonesque dialogue and absurd levels of snark
Dr. Horrible was written, produced, and directed by the Whedons and it's one of the best and most sincere works of visual media of the current century.

>>24485180
This but unironically

>>24496635
Heartwarming and wholesome (unironically)

>>24486598
Nah. ***SHE*** would finally be able to be her trve self and transition (And then get a black boyfriend).

If they prohibited drugs that were freely available for everyone and marketed like groceries in the past, then why won't they internationally prohibit social media like that? I think it would part of healing the world.

>>24497501
>it's how normal men socialize, by busting each other's balls at every turn

I'm sincerely sorry for you if this is how you grew up. Yes, in boy groups this might be true to some degree, but real friends aren't like that at all. And 1 real friend is worth more than any kind of retarded peer group.

>>24484721 (OP)
Mass education/literacy. There are still born peasants and slaves. Contemporary evil at grand scale is more heinous for the bad conscience of vicious dunces dancing to their paymasters' key jangling— of course 'discourse' is shit: "No gods no masters!"

>>24505632
I'm sincerely sorry that you missed this sort of interaction in your life. That you are so insecure that you can't entertain or resolve conflicts with banter or ball busting.

>>24505632
Anon I think you've legitimately never had close male friends if you don't recognize that normalcy of this. Banter between guys is fun for everybody.

Reading Brief Interviews with Hideous Men rn. Liking it a lot