145 Comments

Commenting has been turned off for this post
Carina's avatar

I’m trying to ween myself off self-deprecating irony, a crutch (disproportionately used by women) that always gets lots of likes on Twitter. It won’t be adorable when I’m 60 and still posting that I’m a disaster at basic adult tasks.

The constant feedback (likes=dopamine), combined with the algorithm that teaches us how to be popular, can really warp a person’s brain.

Expand full comment
Clayton Davis's avatar

I've been reading a lot of 18th century English lit lately, and if one thing is clear, the era was rich with killer ironists: Swift, Pope, Dr. Johnson, Gibbon, and Hume could absolutely eviscerate a target without even raising their voices or breaking character. But all of them could--and usually did--spend most of their time writing seriously about serious topics. Swift was an ordained clergyman, for fuck's sake: however much we peg the man to some half-baked notion of misanthropic "Swiftian satire," he spent every Sunday of his adult life talking patiently and plainly about Heaven, Hell, faith, hope, and charity.

Like Freddie, I'm continually surprised at how few ambitious young writers don't try to be more serious more often, if only so their jokes land much, much harder.

Expand full comment
143 more comments...

No posts