Don't worry, I'm doing it ironically

This isn’t an uncommon occurrence anymore. A friend or acquaintance, or maybe a random stranger whose conversation you happen to pick up, says they listen to Ke$ha, or they watch “The Bachelor.” Or maybe their favorite movie is “Glitter,” featuring that falling star Mariah Carey.  

You recoil in fear, in judgment, in absolute astonishment. How could somebody living a civilized life confess to such unspeakable acts?

They notice the wash of terror on your face and immediately jump in. They say, “Oh, don’t worry. I’m doing it ironically.”

But what do we mean when we say we do things ironically?

Though the actual definition of ironic hardly carries much weight anymore, I’ll give it to you anyway.

According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary — which I used online, of course, I wouldn’t use a real dictionary unless I was doing it ironically — irony is “the use of words to express something other than and especially the opposite of the literal meaning.”  

So what this means, essentially, is whatever you’re doing, saying, watching, listening to or whatever, you’re doing for reasons opposite to those originally intended.

For example, you rock out drunk in basements to Justin Bieber because you’re actually making fun of his music and prepubescent baby face.

Either way, you still know all the lyrics to “As Long As You Love Me,” and you can’t deny it.

While I don’t want to blatantly champion doing things ironically, I still have to admit it’s a vast improvement from saying something is your “guilty pleasure.”

Just because you like Miley Cyrus doesn’t mean you have to label her a guilty pleasure.

Miley is awesome. Don’t feel guilty about it. And if Miley haters hound you, just jam out to “Party in the U.S.A” together. Come on, no one can resist that hook.

But doing things ironically doesn’t just extend to love of trashy pop music and brain-dead television. This is where I end up the most culpable myself.

I’m the literal king of saying things “ironically.” Any time I use an OMG or an LOL in a text message, two things happen.

One, I tell myself I’m doing it ironically and the receiver of said message knows so. Two, a small part of my soul dies because bad grammar in text messages kills me slowly like a black plague.

But all this still raises the question, why do we do things ironically in the first place? Is it a sense of shame?

In a world where we are constantly told what we should and shouldn’t like by a myriad of sources, we sometimes choose to stand our ground and own up to what we love. But we’re doing so with the added post-script of embarrassment.

Or perhaps your inner circle would judge you for liking something too “mainstream” when the rest of the world is pretty much on board with it.

Maybe a super hipster actually loves “Jersey Shore” but can’t admit to it unless they coda their love with a dash of humiliation.

We’re allowed to own our obsessions, just not unashamedly.

But when is the final frontier of irony going to be reached? Eventually, is it going to be ironic to do something ironically? Will the vicious circle ever end?

I’m not sure, because as far as I’m concerned, we’re still going to use irony as a crutch regardless.

Either way, own up to what you love, what you say and what you do.

Because at the end of the day, no one really cares that much if you’re obsessed with Taylor Swift, be it ironically or not.

­— wdmcdona@indiana.edu