Continuing his discourse on leaders and salesmen, DFW explains the political toll of this early-onset exposure. He alleges that John F. Kennedy was the country’s last great leader because he legitimately inspired Americans. Why, then, did Young Voters yawn, roll their eyes, or make ironic jokes when McCain said that he wanted to be president in order to inspire the youth? DFW suggests that JFK’s audience was far more innocent that we; neither Vietnam or Watergate had yet to deter society’s political efficacy. Even more plausible, “…the science of sales and marketing was still in its drooling infancy in 1961 when Kennedy was saying ‘Ask not….’” The youth of the sixties had not spent their lives as the targets of marketing ploys; they knew nothing of spin; they were unfamiliar with salesmen. Because they were raised without the media and its ironic undercurrents, they were not so damn sad all of the time.
It is worth noting that the media has effectively undermined civic life as it has permeated growing generations, including millennials. Take the old adage, “Life imitating art.” Oscar Wilde popularized the phrase in his 1889 essay, "The Decay of Lying,” writing, “Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life.” Since the dawn of mankind, art has, more literally, imitated life: painters of the Renaissance aspired to depict space as realistically as possible, pioneering linear perspective; the Impressionists depicted landscapes, urbanization, and the changing of light in real time; artists heralding from the Pop Art movement depicted icons from popular culture. And so the list continues. Since the emergence of the cinema, though, viewers have started to doubt reality as being too cinematic in nature; since silent films brought stories of people and the everyday experience to the silver screen, society has preferred life imitating art to art imitating life. (Note that the print date of Wilde’s text was in the midst of the popularization of the silent movie). For this reason, few voters bore any reverence for McCain’s nearly six-year trial as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam’s Hanoi Hotel. DFW writes, “It’s very easy to gloss over the POW thing, partly because we’ve all heard so much about it and partly because it’s so off-the-charts dramatic, like something in a movie instead of a men’s real life.” Hence, the multimedia experience has trained us to doubt the credibility of personal narratives; rather than thinking of movies as being too much like reality, we question the honesty of reality because it is too cinematic. Such is why DFW delivers a pedagogical demand to his readers, inviting them to insert themselves into McCain’s shoes: “But try to imagine it at the time, yourself in his place, because it’s important.” “Try to imagine it was you.” Likewise, the media has thwarted the normal mental and emotional development of the youth. Stein writes, again in “Millennials: The Me Me Me Generation": “Millennials have come of age in the era of the quantified self.” Rather than taking our time growing up, we yearned to turn 13 and – legally – create a Facebook account, trying to garner a greater network of friends than the next user. Social currency was (and is) our popularity. Stein continues, “What [millennials] do understand is how to turn themselves into brands, with ‘friend’ and ‘follower’ tallies that serve as sales figures.” The phrase “sales figures” particularly resonates with me, indicating that we are all salesmen, rather than leaders; we market ourselves endlessly (social networks boast no curfews, just periods of lower traffic during which we know better than to post because then our statuses, shares, and pictures will not garner as many likes or retweets), perpetuating the trend of distrust which we’ve been raised to lament. Even fifty-two-year-old BEE can attest to this, again in an interview with Olah: “…it’s kind of touching to me that there isn’t an economic way of elevating yourself, and the only way to do that is through your brand, your profile, and your social media presence… Online presence is the currency.” Our worth is entirely dependent upon the brand which we create online from an early age, which brings me to my next point.
When I say “the brand which we create online,” what I mean is, “the façade which we maintain on social networks.” Here I refer back to Carey’s “The Spiritual Toll of Pop Culture’s Irony Obsession.” Carey explains that the Internet has given twenty-somethings the ability to be the most transparent generation in history: social media allows us to literally document our every thought, meal, outfit, song choice, idea, and observation. “A huge part of our lives are now consumed with either presenting ourselves online… or scrolling through infinite feeds of other people’s lives.” Even when we run out of new content with which to absorb ourselves on one timeline on our network, another app awaits: Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are my stand-bys. However, this double-edged sword creates a catch-22 sort of conflict, as Carey writes: “On one hand, we are constantly making judgments about what other people post online, and on the other, we constantly feel the pressure to make sure our own contributions won’t be judged too harshly.” Because we are all well-acquainted with the judgments which we pass on others’ posts, we are careful to strictly post the content that we are confident will garner the greatest number of likes, the least amount of criticism, and garner our social currency. Carey explains, “We literally filter our own pictures [ever seen someone whose usage of the teeth-whitening effect was all too liberal?] so they look the way we are comfortable with people perceiving them.” However, due to this uncensored transparency, we run the risk of being too vulnerable: “Being too honest can backfire.” The solution is irony, “…a device we can use to be ‘honest’ but still shielded from the harshest judgments.” After all, “We know that is almost everything we do, post, photograph, or publically think is only partially serious, we only have to take criticism partly seriously.” As media has enabled the uninterrupted connections which social networks accommodate, millennials have turned to irony as a refuge from the judgments which we pass upon others.
As we strive for this abstract social currency, or seek to maximize our likes and popularity online, we fall into the habit of constantly measuring ourselves against our “friends.” Musto writes, “Websites such as Facebook and Instagram cause people to compare themselves to others in unfair ways.” We engage in this intangible rat race online with the hopes of garnering the greatest degree of popularity, an impalpable benchmark against which we compare ourselves.
Ashby and Carroll refer to this tendency as “the safety of ironic remove.” Wampole writes, “The ironic frame functions as a shield against criticism.” When we do not mean what we say, criticism is also untrue; we can go on living in happy oblivion, free from any form of disparagement that chips away at our self-worth. “Irony is the most self-defensive mode, as it allows a person to dodge responsibility for his or her choices, aesthetic or otherwise.”
Even worse than a defense mechanism, irony also assumes the role of a reactive player: “This kind of defensive living works as a pre-emptive surrender and takes the form of reaction rather than action.” Why even contribute to society– actively share our thoughts – even care when we expect to be ridiculed, regardless? Rather than taking accountability or ownership of our ethos, we have succumbed to ironic remove as a means of excusing away any judgments which we expect for our thoughts and actions. Irony, then, is a tendency that excuses us from active participation, reducing our roles to mere spectatorship. It also reduces our innately human capacity to really feel, to have or express emotion.
With this sort of warped mentality, any meaningful truths cannot be sought out, nor can any meaningful change be effected. Carey writes, “But shielding ourselves from real emotion – even when it’s uncomfortable or at the risk of being ‘too’ vulnerable – can cause us to miss out on real truths.” In "This Is Water,”
DFW’s 2005 commencement address at Kenyon College (also accessible via YouTube), he says, “…because the really significant education isn’t really the capacity to think, but rather about the choice of what to think about.” When we opt not to engage in productive discourses or dialogues, because broadcasting unpopular beliefs or making ourselves vulnerable to criticism, we don’t think; we accept what already is –we play right into the hands of the status quo. We accept the truths that are given to us, which, in the millennial’s case, is the inherent distrust of any meaningful interaction because words are meaningless and everyone is trying to sell us something for his or her own profit. Nobody cares about us, and we are left with no motivation to care about them. However, if we transcend irony and really think, we might find these capital-T truths.
In an anecdote which he shares in the address, DFW offers a story about two men, one religious and one an atheist, at a bar in the remote Alaskan wilderness. The men are arguing about the existence of God when the atheist says, “Just last month I got caught away from the camp in that terrible blizzard, and I was totally lost and I couldn’t see a thing, and it was fifty below, and so I tried [the whole God and prayer thing]: I fell to my knees in the snow and cried out, ‘Oh, God, if there is a God, I’m lost in this blizzard, and I’m gonna die if you don’t help me.” The religious man looked, with a face of puzzlement and disbelief, at the atheist and asked, “Well, then, you must believe now. After all, here you are, alive.” The atheist simply rolled his eyes and replied, “No, man, all that was was a couple Eskimos happened to come wandering by and showed me the way back to camp.” In a standard liberal arts analysis, in a politically correct culture that prizes tolerance and diversity of belief, no one would want to claim that either the religious man or atheist’s interpretation was true and the other false. If anything, the ironic millennial pursuing a liberal arts education would make some smart-ass remark and disregard the case study out of fear of being incorrect or sounding ignorant. However, the exact same experience can bear two totally different things to two totally different people, especially given their totally different belief templates and ways of constructing meaning from experience. The impetus on us, in transcending irony, is to actually question these constructs and generate our own opinion or takeaway from the story’s analysis.
The thing is, real change only comes from responses with real humility; irony is an insufficient means of effecting positive change in a culture so ridden with social injustices, just as ours is. If anything, irony entails a certain indifference to the causes which millennials should be championing. On the consequences of the Internet age, Wampole writes, “Prioritizing what is remote over what is immediate, the virtual over the actual, we are absorbed in the public and private sphere by the little devices that take us elsewhere.” When we focus too much on our own brand and social currency, we sap the short attention spans that we should be focusing on genuinely relating to one another. In "Why Millennials Like Me Are Doomed to Be Unhappy,” a post on 2machines, Katie Knibbs offers a personal account of how technology has erected a thick barrier between her and reality; her reliance upon social networks for all forms of interpersonal interaction have left her incapable of maintain productive relationships – social or professional – in the flesh.
Granted, while our reliance upon technology and the ironic trends which it facilitates have enabled us with some skill sets (multitasking and technological savvy), as Wampole writes, “Inwardness and narcissism now hold sway.” Irony as a defense mechanism is inherently self-serving, as it protects the user behind the social media post from criticism. When we indulge this tendency, we distract ourselves from the issues that permeate our collective generation. She adds, “This ironic ethos can lead to a vacuity and vapidity of the individual and collective psyche.”
Carey provides an application to this observation, writing, “Change in behavior and in our lives comes from not only our ability to recognize flaws [i.e., in the judgments we make about others’ posts], but to respond in sincere humility.” Humility is an emotion, something that millennials reject entirely when falling back upon ironic remove. So, change “…means removing any of the shields – like detached irony – so that we have the ability to experience and express sincere emotion and authentic relationship.” What millennials need, and what millennials have been groomed to avoid, is to feel something again.
Learning to feel something means not being calloused by the world, but bearing the resilience to consciously respond to the world. It’s okay to be negatively affected by something. In "On David Foster Wallace's Conservatism,” James Santel addresses themes of suffering in the arts. He writes, “Words often fall offensively short in the face of suffering.” Ergo, language and art may not always wholly encompass the circumstances of the human condition to which we are all subject. Moreover, readers or observers may not even want to be further saturated with suffering, especially if they’re experience it firsthand themselves. The thing is, though, that suffering is normal and human and shared; suffering is something to which we can all relate.
So, it is okay to have a negative feeling, as long as it is some sort of feeling. The way by which millennials will transcend irony is by valorizing individual truths. At the conclusion of “Up, Simba,” DFW writes, “…the final paradox is that whether [McCain] is truly ‘for real’ now depends less on what is in his heart than on what might be in yours.” It is up to millennials not to be disenchanted, but to feel and to think for themselves. Whether we are positively or negatively effected is one thing; what matters is what we respond resiliently and engage in a productive dialogue that will, hopefully, pave a path towards meaningful change.
Try to stay awake. (DFW).
