It's Ironic About Irony, Isn't It?

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I noticed this when I was at the apartment of a friend who collected the plastic figurines they give away at fast food places. He collected them ironically, of course. But this, I noted with curiosity, didn't change the fact that he was eating at fast food places a hundred times a year, and had filled his apartment with ugly-looking junk.

The Last Psychiatrist dissects this phenomena here: irony, he notes, is a way to pretend to be distant from something while actually being all in: Did my friend think the fast food companies cared whether he was giving them his money ironically or not? The irony with which he handed over his pay to them did not, I imagine, spoil the view the CEO of QuickyChix enjoyed from his seaside villa one little bit.

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