"Where did all the irony come from? What pole sent this glacier that has pinned modern culture under its massive arrogance? Irony asserts implicitly that you are superior to the thing you are ironizing over, or to its maker. Ordinarily it is a useful, important color in our emotional paintboxes. But when we paint everything this color, its character changes. Irony is quintessentially the attitude of someone at a dinner party who wants you to know that he can't leave but would rather be anyplace else. The educated elite of America and the West have been feeling mighty ironical ever since the cultural revolution: They have denounced and forsworn Western culture but never had any intention of leaving the table while the feed was underway. So they have had to settle for letting everyone know how much smarter they are than the other guests, how little they are enjoying themselves, and how superior they are to the culture they themselves superintend. ...
"What did we accomplish in that great cultural revolution that created the new ice age, the Sterile Age, the Age of Irony? We manfully whacked down virginity and, crashing to earth while we celebrated it, crushed the idea of purity in the mud. And then we toppled art, which fell backwards and smashed sanctity to splinters. And then spitting on our hands we shouldered loveless sex and paraded it in triumph, which had the unplanned consequence of exalting sterility and grinding out passion among the cigarette butts. And our dry ironic laughter, which has always been joyless, has come to sound like labored breathing on a deathbed." [emphasis mine] -- David Gelernter, "Dead in the Water"
