The Irony Epidemic 🙄
And a dispatch from the mountains
Bienvenue, willkómmen, and welcome to another blog.
Your evening read this fine Sunday will include a smorgasbord of observations and ideas—some stemming from the things normally in my purview, some stemming from the things outside my train window view.
Vicky's new job here in Geneva doesn't start until November 1, so we've been able to spend a decent chunk of time exploring the city. This weekend, we popped out to the Jungfrau region; our overnight trip consisted of hiking, sightseeing, and mulled-wine-drinking (in no particular order).
It's been a weird week—things have moved so quickly this month, and it took a bit to adjust time zones and settle in. But more on that after some thoughts on, you guessed it, the twenty-fifth anniversary of Family Guy.
— NGL
P.S. Last blog, I wrote about “raw copy,” the importance of creative brain trusts, and the correlation between print media success and inflation-proof glizzies. If you missed it, check it out here.
I think Peter Griffin's Hot Ones appearance lays the “irony epidemic” bare. A lot to unpack here, so let me start with the latter before bringing this thing full circle.
In a since-deleted Tumblr post, American alt rock singer Ethel Cain (real name: Hayden Silas Anhedönia) wrote an essay about the “irony epidemic,” a label she used to describe the period we’re currently living through:
“nobody takes anything f**king seriously anymore.
listen, i LOVE to laugh and i love funny shit but like…there is such a loss of sincerity and everything has to be a joke at all times.
i feel like no matter what i make or what i do, it will always get turned into a f**king joke.”
In an excellent piece for DAZED, culture writer Halima Jibril agreed with Anhedönia—and built on the singer’s argument by referencing the recent tragic death of One Direction’s Liam Payne:
“Social media offered no space for nuance. My timeline was quickly flooded with edited photos of his dead body, jokes and memes.
And the justification? Because he was an alleged abuser, that made it OK.
This…[showed] me that our constant need to joke and meme everything has robbed us of the ability to think critically and feel empathy.”
Which brings me to hot sauce and chicken wings.
Full disclosure: I have absolutely nothing against Hot Ones. I think Sean Evans does a great job prepping his interviews, and the format (while a little overdone at this point) has elicited all-time façade-breaking moments for many a celebrity.
Further, I don't believe anyone on the Hot Ones team (Evans included) would consider their product journalistic—which, for the purposes of this essay, we can broadly define as the act of unpacking new information and holding powerful people accountable. The show is entertainment front and center; more specifically, it’s a Gen Z-centric take on Jimmy Fallon that PR folks have latched onto as a way to make their clients appear “authentic” when they make their promotional rounds.
Yet what happens when those clients are no longer real humans? Hot Ones has pushed the boundaries of this concept by having Evans “interview” animated characters from shows and IP that sponsor the episode. Puss in Boots, Donald Duck, and now Peter Griffin have all appeared across the table from Evans (the latter to promote the twenty-fifth anniversary of Family Guy).
It’s branded content…but people are more than just tuning in, and the wings aren’t even real. The Peter Griffin episode, uploaded last week, already has 3.6 million views; the Donald Duck episode, from August, sits at 21 million.
Why does this work? For the same reason the show works with real guests: audiences want to see how people their favorite characters react to eating hot wings, and the Meme-Industrial Complex takes it from there.
The thing is, though, this whole apparatus only works if everyone is in on the joke—and you better believe Seth MacFarlane (the creator of Family Guy and voice of Peter) understood the irony at play. Within the first minute of the “interview,” Evans welcomes Peter onto the show, to which Peter responds: “It’s nice to be a part of the decline of American journalism.”
I say all this because people have been pushing online for Kamala Harris to go on Hot Ones pretty much since she took over the Democratic ticket. It’s partially for the hilarity of seeing a presidential candidate eat hot wings, and the endless memes that would come out of it. More importantly, though, are what those memes might mean: a way to communicate with young voters who almost certainly watch YouTube and don’t pay for cable.
Trump has acknowledged where power in media has shifted since the jump—and acted accordingly. The Information tracked Trump and Harris’ podcast appearances in the chart above, finding that the former is roughly tripling the latter. This is before Trump went on The Joe Rogan Experience on Friday, a video which already has thirty million views on YouTube and presumably tens of millions more on Spotify.
Time will tell if this podcast-heavy strategy—intended to only conduct friendly conversations while increasing the surface area for potential memeage—pays off, and whether these audiences actually turn out to the polls. Regardless, I’m bringing this up as commentary on our waning media literacy.
“3 hours unedited…this is what we should expect for journalism,” one comment on the Rogan podcast reads (eighteen thousand likes). “Free journalism is the future,” another reads (twenty-two thousand likes).
Hot Ones should be celebrated for crafting a model that works in a fraught business environment. But if people are viewing Trump’s Rogan appearance as “journalism,” labeling a sponsored “interview” with a talking, animated duck eating hot wings* as the modern-day equivalent of 60 Minutes doesn’t feel like a future that’s particularly far off.
To conclude, I’m not sure this conversation will really matter to most people at a time when everything we consume is through the lens of ironic detachment. After all, as long as there’s memes to be made, people will keep tuning in.
I think Stephen A. Smith’s appearance with Sean Hannity drives this point home, a point which I won’t belabor much longer.
The Tl;Dr is that Smith (host of ESPN’s First Take, and arguably the world’s most recognizable sports broadcaster) went on Hannity’s show on Fox this week to debate…something, presumably politics-related. And it gave us this meme:
Now, I’ll admit it—even this cold-hearted Connecticuter can’t stop laughing every time I see this screenshot. One person tweeted this: “Stephen A Smith has been baptized in the fires of loud broadcast sports journalism; unleashing him upon political coverage is like letting a leopard out at a petting zoo.” Another person concurred, tweeting that “debating Stephen A. Smith on television is like invading Russia in the winter.”
Like MacFarlane, Stephen A. is in on the joke, too. He tweeted out the photo above with no caption attached because, well, why add anything else? The only reason I even knew he went on Fox was because of this image. I still don’t know what they actually talked about, and I probably never will. Smith moved on from his job as a newspaper reporter and columnist (roles that require putting thought into writing) a long time ago because banging your head against the wall doesn’t make much sense when you can simply give the people what they want via a single low-res JPG.
In a weird way, Smith’s appearance on Hannity almost felt like a victory lap of sorts. A theory I’ve had for the last half-decade or so is that the sports debate show format that First Take helped popularize has seeped into every facet of American culture (and beyond), correlating directly with the current hot take-laden nature of politics amid the backdrop of Trumpism’s rise. Maybe Stephen A. just wanted to collect the recognition he rightfully deserves.
But that’s a conversation for another day. Maybe I’ll have to loop in a PhD student to help me pursue this important research.
I think memes aren’t all bad—I promise! With all due respect to the two essays above (and my desire to not come off as a fun-hating narc), we can throw everything out the window and just accept that some bits are just highly worth committing to.
Exhibit A: Anthony Potero—aka the YouTube creator Anthpo, who graced the cover of Creator Mag.4 back in 2022 and is legitimately one of the funniest people I’ve ever met—dressed up as a masked superhero named “Cheeseball Man” in the spring. Anthony created an international phenomenon when he…spent an afternoon eating a jar of cheeseballs in front of a New York City crowd. Most of the people found the event through anonymous TikToks and posters Anthony hung up around the city.
Anthony took off the mask in August, revealing he was Cheeseball Man with a behind-the-scenes documentary at how it all went down. Not everyone was happy that Anthony decided to hang up the cape, however—a new archnemesis named Cornhead Killer emerged shortly afterwards, taunting Cheeseball Man by terrorizing New York City citizens.
As the Old Testament clearly states**, once you gain a following online, you need to take the natural next step into becoming an influencer boxer. So, that’s what Anthony and Cornhead are doing—they’ll be fighting on November 16, and they even held a “press conference” today.
Maybe I’m biased. But if we’re really going through an “irony epidemic,” I feel like we’re in good hands if Anthony decides to stake his rightful claim as king. I mean, the dude held a Timothée Chalamet lookalike contest in NYC…and Timothée actually showed up!
I think I need to hop on the Duolingo wave, even though I’ve heard mixed reviews regarding the app’s actual effectiveness.
Switzerland has four official languages: French, German, Italian, and Romanish. Over the last week here, I haven't particularly mastered that group—I took one year of beginner's German in college, and mon français est comme-ci comme-ça after seven years of middle and high school classes.
Switching between languages can be tiring mentally. You think you've got a word or phrase down in one, and then you take a train three hours to a different region of the country—and have to either communicate on your toes or practice “Do you have a bathroom?” all over again.***
It’s given me a newfound respect for the people who live and work here. They’re expected to not only know at least French and German, but also English (which tourists from all over the globe default to) while staying in touch with their native tongue (particularly if they’re an immigrant).
If folks here can be conversational in four or more languages, I can at least get back on the French grind. Any and all recommendations for effective apps or classes are appreciated.
I think I'm tired. It really hit me when I realized that this is the fourth blog I’ve written where the majority of its contents were produced on my phone—mainly due to our insane travel schedule, driving across the country and moving Vicky out here within the span of three weeks.
The irony is not lost on me that I wrote about the benefits of “raw copy” last week…then, upon rereading that essay the next day, proceeded to spot a typo. My natural inclination is to defend myself and say, Well, that’s what happens when you’re writing after midnight while hunched over an airplane tray in the dark!
Isn’t that kind of the point, though? When you’re doing this away from an institution, the pressure’s all on you to churn out the best possible product within the constraints of your reality.
In any event, it’s been fun exploring Switzerland with Vicky, and we’re both very much dreading November 5—the day we say good-bye (for now). Yet I’d be lying if I said the travel hasn’t done a number on me.
I’ll save more of a recap from our adventures for a later letter. Nonetheless, here’s a quick look from our hike down Harder Kulm on Saturday. I clocked over fifteen miles and thirty thousand steps by the end of the day, which flies by when the views are this stunning.
Thanks for reading! And shoot me a reply or DM if anything resonated with you in particular—I respond to them all.
* Supposedly, the animated hot wings Donald Duck ate were made of cauliflower, not chicken. I don’t buy it. I mean, have you tried eating a plate of cauliflower wings?
** I think this one was from Leviticus, but don’t quote me on it.
*** For the record, I haven’t actually had to ask this question, and pretty much everyone here speaks near-perfect conversational English. Quite impressive tbh.