Irony and Winnipeg

Being from Winnipeg (see post below), I deeply appreciate irony. I enjoy the way it prompts one to rethink received truths and to tinker with them. While irony became an overused concept in the mid- to late 90s (after the publication of Douglas Coupland’s Generation X) and subsequently fell out of fashion, it continues to offer the possibility for critique (and humor) in ways that I hope will be soon be vigorously revisited. I also value the fact that irony is difficult to deploy in the name of branding and/or marketing, because it is slippery and unreliable in terms of eliciting the kind of consumer response the rhetoric around “The American Dream” does. Ironists are not the most dependable or predictable consumers.