Anyone who grew up after the 1950s, but especially who came of age in the last couple of decades, has absorbed an astonishing amount of marketing. Today, everything is branded from your underwear to sports stadia, and you are barraged with 5K to 10K marketing messages per day, depending on who’s counting.
It’s natural to feel a little helpless in the face of all that advertising; especially if you’re under 35 and material things, jobs and housing are tough to come by.
What’s the result? People, especially the rising generation, have turned against the direct sell. They’ve gotten angry. And most of all, they’ve embraced irony. Irony is the humor of the dispossessed. It’s raging against the machine, quietly. It’s sticking it to the man, when you can’t afford him to notice.
It’s the ultimate revenge against being trapped in a mercantile universe where everything’s for sale and you can’t believe anything you hear.
So you say one thing while meaning another – the opposite. That’s irony. It gives you a moment of power, when your listener suddenly realizes you didn’t mean what you said. You pull the meaning rug out from under her.
And it suggests three important lessons for public speakers wishing to stay relevant today:
- Don’t sell
- Use anger strategically
- Employ ironical humor – avoid the one liner
The fastest way to date yourself is to give a speech that includes cheesy one-liner humor, sells hard, and is full of happy talk. Don’t do it unless you crave irrelevance.
Don’t use humor – use irony. Preferably unbranded, angry irony.
Nick, I would love to see a video clip or two of somebody using irony well from the stage.
Great point, David — I’ll find a few examples and put them in a subsequent post…..
Our younger generations are fluent in irony, snark, and viral memes in a way that older generations barely comprehend. Read the reviews on Amazon of the Hutzler Banana slicer (do this, it is just awesome) and maybe, like me, you will be bowled over at the level of comedic irony at which the Internet generation operates. I think irony is actually just like funny. You have to be good at it, or don’t do it.
Good to hear from you, Andrew, and thanks to the reference to the banana slicer, which is a classic in the Amazon comment annals. And thanks for your caution about irony!
Always be cautious with using humor –even irony– in your presentations and try to be politically correct. ‘Funny’ is not the same for everyone and different people may appreciate your jokes differently (or even take them as an offence). A true story on http://b2bstorytelling.wordpress.com/2013/06/19/monkey-business/