Sandbox

I spent my fall break all up and down the East Coast: I went to Comic Con in New York, visited a friend in Providence, said hi to my family in Pennsylvania and had dinner with a friend in Atlanta. My travels exposed me to a vast array of experiences: watching Green Lantern make out with Professor Chaos, listening to nerds who actually have that lisp ask questions at Battlestar Galactica panels, throwing knives and rolling cigarettes at a RISD gathering and enjoying the amenities of the suburban life that I will never again enjoy after this year.

However, perhaps my most enjoyable [notable?] experience was a rousing game of Apples to Apples with a bunch of NYU students. I was brought to the party by a high-school friend, but I was otherwise unacquainted with the group. As an introduction, someone thought it pertinent to say, “You might take a while to adjust... I don’t know if you know, but we’re all pretty ironic here.” Meanwhile, card pairs such as “husbands” and “normal” were being played.

The obsession with irony in pop culture is both bizarre and contrived. For instance, Gap and American Apparel “hipsters” think they may be ironic by virtue of the clothes they put together but are actually ironic on the level that they’re doling out large quantities of cash to emulate a fashion trend spearheaded by those who couldn’t afford expensive clothes and embraced it. Likewise, my Apples to Apples friend had no conception of just how ironic he was being.

You may think that a middle-aged man dressed in a really bad Captain America outfit might be something ironic. Alas, it is quite the contrary: it’s a thing of beauty. Rarely can you see such an open expression of inner identity as a Comic Con. It is a place where Doctor Whos and Monarchs alike are not subject to societal judgment; they are free from a context in which their presence may be ironic. Comic Con is a special place, a haven for nerds to be free. All I wanted to do was talk about Cylon ethics and gawk at Tricia Helfer. Duke is also supposed to be a safe haven for our kind, but I’ve never felt that way here. Isn’t that ironic?