Observations on irony’s cultural representation on the internet

Irony is a tool familiar to anyone who makes use of complex language as we understand it. The contrast between what is expected and what happens is a great feature of storytelling as we understand it as well as joke telling. There is however, another definitionally different version of irony which gripped the internet for many years. 

An irony that formulated itself in the image of an emotionally detached surrealism whose elements have become irksome to the public.

The internet landscape of the current day may be vastly different from that of old, so old that I myself don’t remember large swathes of it, but the ways in which it echoes that same landscape can be striking when examined. 

The ever-escalating clickbait game of current year reflecting the meta of the (now-extinct) reply girl, the energy of much of old sketch comedy YouTube being disseminated in the form of shorter form one-person sketches (like those of Caleb City or ProZD) and irony as loose cultural movement fading into a kind of background.

It can be hard to grasp the place of irony on the internet upon first blush. The veneer of the smug commenter can be impenetrable and not worth the time to crack; people using their anonymity for the worse with sarcasm as their sword and buckler. A behavior undoubtedly familiar to anyone who has spent five minutes on the World Wide Web, but one particularly memorable to those with a lived memory of commentary YouTube circa 2016.

The festerings of pre-Adpocalypse commentary YouTube has likely had sweeping effects that will be noted for years to come. Neglecting some of the most serious and lasting effects, I’d instead like to zero in on the nature of many channels as thinly veiled harassment campaigns. Some drama channels, such as (the aptly named) DramaAlert hosted by “Killer” Keemstar masking beef behind targeted “reporting” and perhaps even more infamously Leafy and his ilk.

Permanently banned off the platform in 2020, LeafyIsHere was perhaps one of the most toxic figures of the mid-2010s internet. The poster child of the commentary community, for better or worse, for years to come Leafy is now appropriately seated in the minds of most users as what he was: an opportunist and a serial harasser. 

This association, sadly, lagged behind his influence on culture and before it was pinned to him, his “defense” of his behavior would become staple.

Claims of engaging in “satire” plastered not only Leafy’s content, but that of his contemporaries. Oftentimes a stock defense for what could easily otherwise be termed as harassment campaigns or cyberbullying, that while being called occasionally, was not rendered unacceptable and unprofitable in the YouTube climate of the time. 

Misapplication of satire as mainstage cyberbullying instead of the use of classical irony to point to societal flaws muddied waters.

Muddied waters that lead to understanding irony in a different way, an understanding of irony as a diffused artistic movement on the internet, a movement which through being overrun by the likes of Leafy lost its vision and favor. The Something Awful Forums, birthplace to much of internet culture as we know it today and origin point of more relevant modern splinter sites Reddit and 4chan, was home to nascent ironic posting on a particular board: FYAD.

FYAD was a notorious free-for-all sub-forum meant to serve as a PvP-on trashposting area for the Goons (account holding Something Awful Forums users). While there many a poster would adopt a character they would trollishly use in the sub-forum for laughs, and this was reflected back at them by other characters of the sort. 

While the worst of the board was genuine engagement with the same people whom it mocked, the same people who would get the board shut down after site creator Rich “Lowtax” Kyanka took note of the fully grown -phobic and Neo-Nazi presence on the board, the best of FYAD produced creators like dril and as noted in Taylor Wofford’s oral history of FYAD at Vice, many of its best posters became ground floor “Weird Twitter” posters.

Surreal audio visual experiences such as video creator CBoyardee’s Dilbert series stand the test of time as a measuring stick for what sincere ironic expression looked like in its heyday, but that’s not how we measure those things anymore. We measure irony by the played out r/SurrealMemes of the late 2010s, by the LeafyIsHeres of the world and worst of all by the Nazis of FYAD’s last days.