Little over a month ago, computer, smart phone and LCD screens across the country seemed to be abducted all at once by equal displays of public debate, outrage and a now infamous medium of philanthropic zeal. It seemed as though, for the better part of 12 days, all that anyone could talk (or rather, post) about centered around two seemingly disparate but equally captivating things: video nominations for the ALS “Ice Bucket Challenge,” and live reports, news articles, video streams and just about every other form of media and commentary regarding the outrage and subsequent protests sparked by the shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.
I, like I imagine many Americans, spent a large portion of my late summer workdays, for better or worse, watching my Facebook timeline transform into something that seemed to be a captivating hybrid between a Socratic seminar, a charity drive and a cerebral overload of epic proportions. It has been a sort of collective agreement among social commentators, literary figures, cynics and hipsters alike to label our time as ‘The Age of Irony.’
Many feel that our generation is defined by an inability to cope with the complexities and general enormity of the problems of our time, instead resorting to sardonic and superficial statements of faux sincerity, only to laugh at just how ignorant or untouched by the problems of the world we really are. The New York Times columnist Christy Wampole cites our social media obsession as the newest and possibly greatest example of irony in our time.
“Our incapacity to deal with the things at hand is evident in our use of, and increasing reliance on, digital technology,” Wampole said in a 2012 article for The New York Times. “Prioritizing what is remote over what is immediate, the virtual over the actual, we are absorbed in the public and private sphere by the little devices that take us elsewhere.”
In Wampole’s view, we surf the web, we retweet, we hashtag and we add our own opinions into the cyber conversation, knowing very well the irony we embody when we post a video of the horrors of police brutality or of the successes of ALS donations filtering in from our proverbial ice bucket for the world to see, all from the comfort of our living room. But even someone who disagrees with Wampole’s view cannot deny the irony of seeing the tragedy of Ferguson unfold right above a Buzzfeed article called “John Travolta Has a Weird New Beard” or “22 Cats That Cannot Even Handle it Right Now.”
Yet, it is interesting to note that it has become ‘hip’ to post an interesting article on the prevalence of police brutality in the United States against African American males or to chime in on your personal opinions in regard to your friend’s post about the insincerity of the ALS “Ice Bucket Challenge.” It may seem to some skeptics that the newfound popularity of getting one’s opinion out there on social media does not change the situation we find ourselves in and that the ‘Age of Irony’ is alive and well whenever we show just how ignorant we are and how safe we are from the complexities of the world’s woes and triumphs alike. Yet it is truly stirring to see immense Facebook threads of heated debate regarding the situation in Ferguson that look more like a senior thesis on socio-political theory than mere chitchat amongst detached and ignorant college students.
On the one hand, it’s impossible to deny that some posts and commentaries on current events are more sincere, well-intentioned and credible than others. Yet it is a fact of our time, like it or not, that most people below age 25 are getting their access to news and shaping their personal view of the world in the process almost exclusively via social media.
As a result, possibly the greatest irony does not reside in our detached and often glib responses to the world’s problems. In a world full of distractions, overwhelming amounts of information, and a growing obsession with technology, it is perhaps most ironic, and most hopeful for the future, that we’re still taking the time out of our day to add to the conversation.
