Oh, The Irony

Isn’t it ironic…don’t you think?

By Snarky LisaPublished about 2 hours ago • 3 min read

This year, the year 2026 of the Common Era, Valentine’s Day is right after Friday the 13th. It feels quite ironic, having the very day of love be preceded by a day traditionally associated with doom and gloom. Of course, the latter is largely based on Western superstition. Nonetheless, it does have a strange feel.

All of this stuff makes me think a bit about what the true meaning of irony is — and how I should use it. Is it sarcasm? Contradictions? Circumstances suddenly going downhill or recovering after some time? People have given various definitions over the years.

There are the classic definitions of irony given in language classes around the world: situational, verbal, and dramatic irony.

Situational irony concerns itself with circumstances and expectations which oppose each other. Verbal irony is in the realm of sarcasm, toying with stating the opposite of what you mean. Dramatic irony is more of a literary device, obscuring information from characters that the outside audience already knows.

When it comes to real world applications, though, things can get rather…murky. Is someone failing a test they studied extremely hard for irony, or is it just bad luck? Does a work project somehow succeeding at its purpose despite minimum effort being put into it count? What about a seemingly loving long-term relationship ending badly?

I’d argue it depends on A: how big the contrast truly is and B: what the expectations involved were.

Let’s go with the test example. If, say, the test was something that was actively known to be difficult and easy to fail by even well-studied and well-read students, then I’d be more inclined to argue for it just being misfortune. However, I would make a different case if the test was genuinely supposed to be passable and the hard-working student still failed it.

Similarly, I wouldn’t exactly call the work project’s success “ironic” if it was easy to manage and not hard to complete. Likewise, there are plenty of reasons an otherwise seemingly wholesome relationship could turn to dust.

What about this year’s holiday coincidence, then? Well…I’d say it depends on how superstitious you are. If you genuinely believe in the horrifying forces which legends say haunt the number 13 and then proceed to have a blast on Valentine’s Day, then sure, your expectations could end up cancelling out. However, the less superstitious among us might be more hesitant to agree.

Both as a tool and as a series of events, irony can be confusing. It is, after all, a set of contradictions. And don’t get me started on sarcasm…

People have argued over what really counts as irony throughout history. For a more recent case (relatively speaking), take Alanis Morisette’s song “Ironic.” Whether it does demonstrate any examples of irony or not is beyond the scope of this article, but one thing’s for sure: it has caused quite the stir throughout its publication.

Perhaps the real power of irony isn’t just in the simple fact that it’s able to obscure things. It also has another: its very existence. Sure, contradictions have always been a part of life. But how do we detect them anyways?

Do we determine them based on each of their quality levels? Their characteristics? If so, how do we make sure we don’t get too subjective to make any sort of judgement?

At the end of the day — does it even matter how accurately we use the word “irony” as a descriptor outside of academia? Could there be a possibility that we could use it more metaphorically to describe drastic contradictions in general?

What do you think? Let me know in the comments!