Simulating the Self: Suffocating in the Quicksand of Internet Meta-Irony

Logan Graham • St. Olaf College

Abstract 

Jean Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation posits a framework with which to analyze cultural symbols based on their ability to represent the real. Baudrillard believed most cultural symbols were quite bad at this representation, and that most were “simulacra”: symbols based on no legitimate reality. In this essay, I apply Baudrillard’s framework to describe the sort of meta-ironic form of communication that pervades the discourse of people who are “terminally online”: a group which is largely composed of young people, characterized by their constant usage of and dependence on internet communities. The end goal is to show the corrosive and suffocating influence of this mode of communication, which threatens to devour our sense of the sincere. 

I. Introduction

In 1981, Jean Baudrillard painted postmodern theory in a layer of neon by developing a new framework for comprehending the late-stage consumer society that he felt Marxist orthodoxy failed to describe; this new critique was focusing on images and symbols used to transfer social meaning. In his opus Simulacra and Simulation, Baudrillard argued that our fixation on these symbols and society’s capital predisposition for creating them led to the generation of simulacra—which are symbols referring to no original—that are neither real nor false, but rather “hyperreal.” Hyperreality is defined as “the generation by models of a real without origin or reality.”  Our lives, Baudrillard contends, are so focused on these simulacra that we have lost truth and meaning, and we now live in a hyperreal space dominated by these symbols. 

In this essay, I apply Baudrillard’s simulacra framework to describe the sort of meta-ironic form of communication that pervades the discourse of people who are “terminally online”: a group which is largely composed of young people, characterized by their constant usage of and dependence on internet communities. The end goal is to show the corrosive and suffocating influence of this mode of communication, which threatens to devour our sense of the sincere. 

II: A Baudrillardian Description of Meta-Irony 

Meta-irony is an uncommon term with contested meanings, so I ought to establish my definition. A typical ironic statement is the exaggeration of the antithesis of a sincere position so as to display the sincere position. Someone might say “I love waiting in lines” to convey they do not love waiting in lines. This sort of irony is, by the internet generation, largely considered trite. 

Meta-irony is adding another layer of obfuscation to the sincere intent. This can exist in four main ways, which model Baudrillard’s four stages of simulacra. While Baudrillard’s simulacra obscure the truth of something that exists in the world, meta-ironic statements add this obfuscation to what is sincere. 

Baudrillard’s first stage simulacra is an attempt at genuinely representing the world. In Baudrillard’s view, one can never grasp exactly what they are aiming to represent, as the viewing and recording of that thing threatens to change it. A stage one meta-ironic statement employs additional layers of irony but the sincere intent is easily understood. 

The second stage simulacra actively obscures the truth—it shifts and perverts what is true in what it represents. A second stage meta-ironic statement similarly seeks to obscure the sincere perspective. This may be done for a number of reasons, but it is essentially the usage of irony to make a certain genuine opinion only visible to people “in the know”. Only those who can decode the subtlety of the irony, often obtained through in-group knowledge, have any idea what the statement means sincerely.  

Once a simulacra enters the third stage, it exists to obscure the fact that there is no longer a basic reality. This simulacra doesn’t typically present itself as fully true, it presents itself as a second-stage simulacra—the difference being that there is no original reality upon which it ultimately refers to. The third form of meta-irony is a statement that relies on intentional ironic ambiguity to mask the lack of a sincere opinion. Sometimes the statement fully becomes sincere or insincere depending on others' reactions to it, but upon the moment of transmission, it is a statement that exists to engage with others while also hiding the lack of a genuine perspective. Many online political “jokes” fall into this categorization, wherein the joke is either representing or lampooning the perspective represented textually depending on people’s reaction to it. 

The fourth and final form of meta-irony is, unsurprisingly, a parallel to a stage four simulacra, wherein the symbol references nothing and becomes purely hyperreal. A statement like this is one in which the speaker has no sincere intent anymore, the real being completely dissolved. Someone who loses sight of their sincerity or sense of self, but keeps the dopamine-fueled communicative momentum of the internet going, can descend into a world of fourth-stage meta-irony, where every statement is simply “going through the motions.” 

The rest of this paper will elucidate examples of meta-irony and will describe the impulses that might drive people to these methods of communication. 

III: The Nakedness of the Digital Sphere

Meta-irony rules online communities. Meta-Irony does not necessarily dog all digital communication, but rather communities of individuals that exist specifically online. One of the defining traits of the modern internet, both for its supporters and detractors, is the fact that any sort of subculture can be found and cultivated online. The internet has provided a remarkably efficient network for people to escape geographical distance and communicate more widely. Many young individuals with marginalized identities can come to rely on these internet communities, especially in cases where in-person communities based on their identity might be unavailable or actively suppressed. 

The internet, of course, facilitates other communities, however. The common media narrative on internet politics is that they can be radicalizing, individuals being able to both find more radical subcultures and create “echo-chambers” for themselves so that they are never challenged by outside opinions. By implying that these radical communities would have existed anyway and that the internet has just allowed them to organize and grow, this narrative overlooks something crucial, which Baudrillard may remind us to consider: the fact that these communities are on the internet is what causes them to exist in their current form. These radical ideologies certainly existed before the internet, but it’s possible that the internet becoming the prime communicative vector has changed them due to the markedly different rhetorical space the internet works within. 

The defining feature of most internet subcultures is that they are naked. These subcultures can be found by nearly anyone at any time, which frees them to both recruits and critics. This is true of all major internet subcultures, and not just the radical ones. This creates a dual-audience issue for the subcultures, where they are bound in their communication by the “public’s” ability to see them but are still wanting to authentically communicate the ideas/experiences of said subculture. There is also a worry of appropriation, where the language of a subculture can be subsumed into the broader cultural milieu and deprived of its rhetorical punch or radical connotation. One only needs to look at the ubiquitous appropriation of phrases—like fierce, werk, yaaas queen, spilling tea, etc.—that emerged from ballroom culture, an underground and revolutionary subculture which originated in 1970s Harlem as protest by queer Black and brown communities.

In order to address this dual-audience, many internet subcultures have turned to meta-irony, specifically second-order meta-ironic statements. By obscuring the sincere position underneath turns of irony, obscure language, and omitted references, the members of the subculture can retain their privacy (in a limited sense). Perhaps more important than privacy, however, is retaining the feeling of a community. If everyone is “in” on it, it may not be a unique community that can help constitute one’s identity anymore. When these ironic signifiers can be spread with the incredible speed of the internet, it can supplant simple and sincere communication for the purpose of retaining this intimacy. A “terminally online” individual with some strong subcultural ties can scroll through their social media feeds and see the extent to which the content they consume would be incomprehensible to the uninitiated. 

These elements have always existed in subcultures, of course—especially ones which have faced persecution—but these rhetorical turns seem to have become fundamentally inauthentic insofar as they never stop being created and there is no moment immune to being seen by the outside. Pre-internet, the hope of many subcultures was to create environments where the obfuscation could stop, but for communities which exist online,  it can never stop. To be engaged with ideas primarily online is to corrode them in the name of appropriating them. This new language of ideas, this discourse defined by second-order meta-irony, bleeds into non-online communication for young “terminally online” individuals. Like Baudrillard warned us when discussing Beaubourg, the medium of communication can elicit a stranglehold over the message itself.  

The medium has triumphed, and the nakedness that it forces has favored obstructing and corrupting the sincere. 

 IV: The Comedic Appeal to the Absurd

Of course, irony is often supposed to be funny. The internet subcultural desire for meta-irony is not exclusive to oppressed peoples and political radicals avoiding appropriation and subjugation. Meta-Irony is sometimes employed for the sole purpose of being funny. There is even a whole type of humor that exists solely to employ this second-order meta-irony: referential humor. Being able to create a web of symbols and irony that only someone with certain experiences could understand is one of the most common types of humor, and it has grown considerably on the internet. 

Those jokes, however, still have some sincerity. They are referring to an experience or a position, oftentimes making a normative judgement on them. There is, however, a different form of humor that has reemerged from the internet: a comedic appeal to the absurd.     

A comedic appeal to the absurd is strange, usually communicated with irony and obscure references, but the point of this appeal isn’t to comment on some idea or experience, the point is to make as little sense as possible. If the viewer isn’t left wondering “why does this exist?”, the mark has been missed. Oftentimes, the references exist so the uninitiated might mistakenly believe there is a meaning that they are missing. The archetypal comedic appeal to the absurd is an image that went viral online. The image is of Mark Zuckerberg at his 2018 congressional hearing, but his face is merged with the video-game YouTube content creator Markiplier and the antagonist of Dreamworks’ 2001 film Shrek, Lord Farquaad. The only text on the image is the capital letter E. This image went viral and became a landmark example of Gen Z humor. The joke is that there isn’t really a joke—it is an appeal to complete absurdity and nonsense. Another component of the virality of this image is to reply to anyone asking what the joke means just with ‘E.’ 

This is a stage four meta-ironic statement. The “E-meme” is a joke which uses a web of references and irony to ultimately mean nothing. Perhaps one could argue that the comedic appeal to the absurd is a postmodern statement on the failure of structures of meaning, a resurgence in dadaism. It may be for some, but there are certainly many who find the ridiculousness of the content funny in and of itself. It isn’t the audience laughing at the creator for making something so stupid; it is the audience and the creator laughing at the creation for being so stupid. 

In a medium where there is an overwhelming stream of content at all times, a stage four meta-ironic statement like this serves to give the viewer something to react to without having to engage with a substantive point or idea (again, there is nothing sincere underneath). There is simply too much available content at all times to engage critically with all of it, especially when the internet often serves as an escape from the criticality of “real” life.  With this comedy, the viewer still gets the feeling of a sophisticated sense of humor by way of recognizing the references employed and by being self-aware about the absurdity of the humor itself. This is the utility of the comedic Meta-ironic, another triumph of the medium. 

V: The Power of Playing with Ideas

The next defining trait of the meta-ironic realm is that of “playing” with ideas. With the growing appeal of the absurd and the complete nakedness of ideas and subcultures, it has become common practice to constantly deal with high-impact ideas and ideologies. This is a related but slightly different phenomenon from political radicalization. 

The best way to explain “playing” with ideas is to reference Simone De Beauvoir’s The Ethics of Ambiguity, wherein she describes five archetypes of individuals who fail to reach a position of existential ethics. The Adventurer, one of Simone De Beauvoir’s archetypes, puts their (largely fake) belief system(s) second to personal gain. “They proclaim their skepticism in regard to recognized values. They do not take politics seriously. They thereby allow themselves to be collaborationists in ‘41 and communists in ‘45, and it is true that they don’t give a hang about the interests of the French people or the proletariat; they are attached to their career, to their success.” 

The meta-ironic Adventurer dances across ideas, communicating them just with third-order meta-ironic statements. They are hiding the fact that they do not believe in anything in particular; they aim to experience the ideological adrenaline of taking extreme, powerful stances. In the long run they are not beholden to or made responsible for any of this. They often hide under anonymity, or switch the subculture they operate in so as to fit their newest ideological plaything. Movement and obfuscation in this manner  is the dual, dialectical nature of extreme internet communication; both exposed and often anonymous. 

It is important to note that “what distinguishes adventure from a simple game is that the adventurer does not limit himself to asserting his existence in a solitary fashion. He asserts it in a relationship to other existences. He has to declare himself.”

In an environment of total solitude, the Adventurer would not need (or even be able) to exist. An Adventurer seeks to identify and construct themselves, but must necessarily do so by negating their other possibilities publicly. In the meta-ironic world, the possibilities are extreme and endless. Simply being a moderate on any issue, or worse, undecided, does not function for the meta-ironic Adventurer. The meta-ironic Adventurer worries they are a “nobody” if they do not have a strong opinion, even on the most inane nonsense. A meta-ironic Adventurer places themselves in an untenable position, where they simultaneously need to keep an ironic distance from what they say (because they have no sincere position), while also putting on a front of absolute certainty.

It is common for the meta-ironic Adventurer to create a persona under the condition of a commitment to non-sincerity, to play with an idea and see how it feels in their mouth. The persona either becomes genuine (a large source of the radicalization of the internet), they ditch the persona for a new one, or, in the worst case, they find the persona slowly eroding the sincere and, with no sincerity grounding the persona, become lost. 

VI: Self Simulating and the Habituation of Self

One of Baudrillard’s greatest insights is that of ‘simulation,’ and the way that something simulated both is and is not truly the thing which it aims at. The metaphor used is that of simulating a sickness; if you stay in bed and begin to simulate the symptoms, it would be inaccurate to say either that you purely are or are not sick.

Sincerity and meta-irony can function in a similar way. If you are constantly communicating with this meta-irony, especially third or fourth-order meta-irony where there is no sincerity, you begin to simulate being a genuine self. From an external perspective you are just living, your ironic persona becomes a full person to the outsider, regardless of the fact that internally you are dealing with a simulation and not the “real thing.” The distinction between genuineness and self simulation arrives from the origin of your actions and statements. To the genuine individual, intent comes from life experiences and actually-held beliefs. For one simulating a self, intent arrives from the concatenation of influences which lead them to act in this inauthentic, Meta-Ironic way. 

This sort of conflict, of course, does not come from a single instance of meta-irony. Laughing at the ‘E Joke’ is not grounds for self-simulation. The habituation and internalization of the meta-ironic, however, can be. It is no controversial statement to say that language and modes of communication can influence us. The dramatic acceleration of linguistic change in public and private communication, which has come with the internet era, perhaps implies that the internet as a medium is especially effective in causing this internalization. The internet worships personas; it loves novelty and encourages an endless parade of internalization. It seems that one needs to be commenting and consuming all manners of ideas and conflicts from numerous corners of the human experience. 

The internet appears to be a genuine discussion on cavalcades of events and ideas. In reality, one can interact with everything the internet places in front of them without ever once having to genuinely hold beliefs about the content. Is it any surprise it has become so ubiquitous? I think it is impossible to come to fully authentic and thoughtful conclusions on everything the internet demands: there isn’t enough time and energy in the day. This efficient detachment and subsequent praise can be intoxicating. 

This is not to fall into Baudrillard’s characteristic nihilism; someone who habituates this method of communication has not necessarily lost all sign of the sincere. I think that most people who have habituated meta-irony have done so in a moderate degree; their sense of self does not seem to have been annihilated. Perhaps they just ingrain a tendency to be clever and ironic rather than authentic or honest. 

I think coming to authenticity is still possible with effort. The struggle of fully internalizing the questions, “do I really believe this?”, and “do I really want to be someone who says things like this?”, in our inauthentic times, cannot be understated. Nonetheless, it is possible. This state of affairs, however, still leaves us in a slippery plight. Millions of individuals becoming socially conditioned (via excessive habituation to and dependency on social media) toward a nihilistic tendency to destroy authenticity in the name of clever irony is still a serious social ill. This is to say nothing of the absolute worst case, however. 

VII: The Tragic Internet Wanderer

It is fully possible for an individual to create one of these online personas and find that it supplants any genuine sense of self. This can often arrive from dependence on an internet community. If someone feels left behind, isolated, and that their real-world community does not care about them (an epidemic amongst young people now), they can come to rely on one of these internet subcultures. Due to the nakedness of these subcultures, however, they can tend toward conformity. 

If someone finds their primary source of love and community to be a fringe internet forum, the meta-ironic modes of communication that are demanded by those communities can supplant sincerity. This is often true of meta-ironic Adventurers, who have gained this sense of community by acting as their persona. If being that persona is, in your mind, the only thing that could afford you love and community, would you care about being sincere? 

When sincerity has been forsaken in the name of a meta-ironic persona, a person becomes fully simulated, they continue to engage in self-expression only based on the inertial forces of internet communication and a desire for the validation their community can give them. Sincerity no longer becomes a factor. 

This is quite a specific person I’ve described, to be sure. Most who have habituated meta-irony still care about sincerity, even if that takes the form of a somewhat painful, day-to-day struggle between that habituation and sincerity. This sort of person, the one who has lost all sincerity, seems to have given up on the fight and struggle. Our Tragic Internet Wanderer has acquiesced to the consumptive meta-irony; it has supplanted anything real and sincere. 

I believe this sort of person is someone we ought to have deep sympathy for. Pushed away by the careless isolation that many face, they fall into the arms of a community that unintentionally tears them in and out. Not only is this harm treated as a prerequisite for love, validation, and joy, it is also by necessity done by their own hand. 

There is an important question here to address. If someone allows themselves to be consumed by this persona, how can we say that this is inauthentic, insincere? Perhaps the transition was, but now, if this transformation has truly happened, this is who they are. The meta-ironic becomes the sincere. 

I think this is a valid reading of the circumstances at hand, and it fits cleanly into Baudrillard’s framework; this could be the “hypersincere,” based on no original sincerity but which now has taken its own form and is effectively sincere, even if perverted. 

This would be a grim case indeed. Someone would not really be able to return from this state. Since the self is both the object and the subject of this sincerity question, once you have become corrupted into a hypersincere space, you would be powerless to get back to sincerity. In a sense, this is a far more faithful application of Simulacra and Simulation to the self, as Baudrillard frequently argued for a similar, unfixable despair for society at large. 

Perhaps on poor, anecdotal evidence, I am inclined to think differently. I have spent lots of time in these fringe internet communities, and I have spoken to people long gone to meta-irony. I’ve been on niche meme pages, political forums housing radicals of all stripes; the sorts of places where people hunt for the most obscure philosophical positions. If the above is true, these are the places where sincerity goes to die. Even in the most extreme cases, there seems to be a sense of internal dissatisfaction. I don’t believe someone can keep the act going forever. It seems that, irreducibly, there is still some sincerity left, that their original sense of self is not totally gone. If this corrupting force is as strong as a Baudrillard would imply, I’m afraid the insincerities of the modern day have ruined us all. Call me Kierkegaardian, but it seems that there is some extent to which habituation cannot fully corrupt us, there is some part of us, even if hidden for the time being, that will keep its grasp on authenticity and sincerity. 

Bibliography

Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, The Body, in Theory (Ann Arbor: 

University of Michigan Press, 1994).

Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity, 2018.

“The Deep-Fried E Meme Shows Just How Weird Memes Can Get,” The Daily Dot, May 2, 

2018, https://www.dailydot.com/unclick/lord-farquaad-e-meme/.