National Workshop for the Definition of Irony Meets in Las Vegas
The definition of irony hinges on the difference between what is expected and what actually occurs. It is the moment reality slips on a banana peel and lands in a thorny pile of unintended consequences.
A fire station burning down is ironic. A marriage counselor filing for divorce is ironic. A conference devoted to defining irony meeting in Las Vegas, a city built upon optimism, probability denial, and shrimp buffets the size of municipal airports, is … at least worthy of discussion.
Unfortunately, irony has spent much of the last three decades being confused with its strange bedfellow coincidence.
Rain on your wedding day? Coincidence.
Finding twenty dollars while attending a budgeting seminar? Coincidence.
A dentist named Dr. Payne? Coincidence.
More than 2,700 attendees gathered at the Desert Mirage Convention Center in Las Vegas to define irony once and for all.
“It seemed necessary,” said Dr. Leonard Briskett, 62, a semi-retired linguistics professor from Tempe, Arizona, who owns seventeen dictionaries and uses twelve of them as furniture risers. “Every year thousands of people misuse the word irony. Some of them are elected officials.”
The conference featured panels including Irony Versus Coincidence, Advanced Situational Contradictions, and Why Alanis Morissette Is Still Being Discussed. Attendees were encouraged to challenge assumptions, refine definitions, and refrain from calling mildly unusual events ironic.
By the second day, however, organizers encountered difficulties. The keynote speaker accidentally delivered a presentation titled Understanding Coincidence. The committee responsible for defining the word “definition” failed to reach a consensus. A panel on reducing confusion generated three formal complaints and what witnesses described as a “philosophical shouting match.”
“This is exactly what we hoped would not happen,” said Trevor Mankiewicz, 55, conference organizer from Reno, Nevada, whose hobby is collecting unread self-help books.
Representatives from the Center for Applied Irony of Cleveland, Ohio, spent several hours debating whether the conference itself qualified as ironic. The question remained unresolved.
At press time, attendees had tentatively agreed that a workshop dedicated to establishing a clear definition of irony ending in confusion, disagreement, and procedural chaos was, at minimum, a promising case study.
It’s no coincidence, there’s another gem about irony here
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