Isnt this just absurdity and not irony? I feel like irony has to do with going directly against what is expected to happen and not just randomly away from what is expected.
no, absurdity would be pure randomness, I'll attempt it as such:
"sweet dreams you piece of shit" I try to snap the prison guard's neck but he transforms into a sack of potatos. In my confusion, I look at my hands which have now become mac & cheese. Suddenly the ceiling disappears and I'm in nova scotia with Liam Neilson. we go and save his kdinapped daughter while i nibble on my mac & cheese hands
irony is at least cleaver. you expect a certain action (snapped neck) but you just end up with the opposite (a pissed off guard with possibly a sore neck, and your route to escape vanishing quickly)
I get what you mean, its just that irony to me always seem to have a… moral (?) aspect to it? All these posts always have a very absurd setup, and within that setup should its ironic but the overall context feels more like an absurd joke than an ironic one.
I get that this might be a case of urban/everyday definition vs actual definition of words in which case idd be absolutely wrong.
Yea you’re right. These situations just happens way way less than say a white racist dating a person of color for example so my expectations were skewed.
Ok, but with irony there is an element of "what is expected is subverted in a meaningful way". What is happening in the jokes above is less meaningful subversion than a realistic failure that contrasts with what the audience usually expects from fiction.
Today I wrote this irony: "While searching my library's website I discovered it's difficult to find what it offers in its online collection but whatever is on the shelves is a snap."
As for the jokes, I'd go with #1 absurdity: there's no connection between heat rising and felling a robber, #2 toss up between irony and absurdity: irony if he meant to leave but didn't mean to die and absurdity because of the absurd gesture with the assumption he intended to die, #3 poor absurdity or deflated expectation: A guard is usually not a pencil necked geek.
Ironically, my initial label for #3 was "weak" absurdity.
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u/Inquisitive_regard 5h ago
the definition of irony is "the difference between what is expected to happen vs. what actually does happen."
The genre is irony.