Post-irony, memes, and media consumption

When seen in this light, whereby meta is a sincerely ironic ‘trinity’ of between, after and beyond, and metamodernism has four orienting touchstones of interiority, intimacy, historicity and ecology, what is on offer is a lodestar that helps to orient our perception of context.

If you are reading this, you likely grew up in an era in which irony was the primary way of engaging with the world. Not only did it have to do with goods, but was (and continues to be) pervasive in interpersonal relations. Asserting one’s individuality and refusing group labels on principle is not unique to hipsters but can be seen in dozens of ot... See more

The point of metamodernism is therefore to help us better perceive our historical context by developing theories and practices that allow us to feel into what it means to be in a time between worlds, where meta-crises relating to meaning and perception abound and we struggle to perceive clearly who we are and what we might do;

“Where we once justified our daily anxieties by doom scrolling through bad news, we now post memes that epitomise our sense of mass existentialism, taking part in a sort of performative negativity that, as a result, protects us against reality,” says Holly Friend, deputy foresight editor at futures consultancy, The Future Laboratory.

We’re lost in the garden of forking memes, and the idea of linear progress along a single historical time line seems like a quaint artifact from a much simpler era. Grand visions of the future are few and far between; the pop cultural landscape is littered with post-apocalyptic dystopias. If we want to make sense of how we got here, we have to unde... See more

Mainstream culture and commodity goods present a problem for people who believe in authenticity.

“reactionary distancing—aestheticizing, ironizing.” Viewing the junk products of pop culture “ironically or anthropologically….from internally afar” allowed hipsters to see them as something not part of themselves

Ironic consumption of commodities is one ... See more