The reason why these guys are Islamaphobes is that there is nothing interesting about Islam or Muslims. Just another irrational, brutal and offensive religion.

Moral: women can't be heroes.

The woods are right there, in front of you.

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Wow. The guys who made that are complete arseholes. Yeah, let's go for some of the most maligned people on the planet and make some money out of them while appearing to be promoters of some arcane notion of "honesty"!

*blocked

Um... Thanks for killing some random brown people for the benefit of capitalists everywhere?

It's just swapping one expectation of female beauty with another. At least the glitzy ones are out having fun while the tree-changers worry about whether their coffee is organic enough.

That guy don't know how to do the math.

It's interesting how it's always people in power who say "we need to vote", "don't give up on democracy, that's what they want" etc. They fail to comprehend that giving up on democracy might be part of the movement that could usher in a new form of politics, a participation in decision making and execution. That politics is simply impossible with the status quo. But then, these professors and other elites of politics are part of that status quo, so it's not surprising they can't comprehend another way.

That's a pretty cheap comment.

>> ^Drachen_Jager:

Alanis Morissette has at least one example of, "true", irony for you purists.
"As the plane crashed down he thought, 'well isn't this nice'."

Yeah, I agree. It's damn difficult. I haven't fully grasped it. That's probably why I'm not a comic genius. I think I stuffed up the cancer one. That fits the definition of irony on wikipedia. We seem to agree on the lifeguard one, but how is the seatbelt example irony? It's unfortunate, but that seems about it for me.

> ^dannym3141:

@<a rel="nofollow" href="http://sarzy.videosift.com" title="member since November 8th, 2007" class="profilelink"><strong style="color: rgb(0, 136, 0);">Sarzy
“any definition of irony—though hundreds might be given, and very few of them would be accepted—must include this, that the surface meaning and the underlying meaning of what is said are not the same."
How exactly does saying "Nice weather we're having!" during a hurricane NOT constitute irony? The surface meaning and the underlying meaning are completely at odds. I'm not sure you've got an exact grasp on it yet.
However neither has your opponent because your examples are ironic - except i believe the lifeguard one. If a lifeguard caused someone else to drown, that might be ironic. Life guards put themselves at a higher risk of drowning by going into dangerous watery situations. I think we can agree loosely that lifeguards are there to save others from drowning, so a correct ironic sentiment would be if they caused someone else to drown. Like, if a lifeguard yelled at a guy swimming to be careful, which distracted the swimmer who swallowed some water and drowned. (which would be situational irony - something put in place to save his life caused his death)
Or something..
Irony is a difficult one to fully grasp, it's really easy to see something as ironic and then later realise oh yeah actually it's not ironic. I think it goes to show how most people have no clue, some people have a bit of a clue, and only rarely does anyone actually have a decent grasp on it - people who don't get it right aren't stupid, it's just a relatively difficult concept.

It isn't sarcasm (a form of irony) because there isn't any contempt. Definitions really help here.

Irony (from the Ancient Greek εἰρωνεία eirōneía, meaning hypocrisy, deception, or feigned ignorance) is a situation, literary technique, or rhetorical device, in which there is an incongruity or discordance that goes strikingly beyond the most simple and evident meaning of words or actions. Verbal and situational irony is often intentionally used as emphasis in an assertion of a truth. The ironic form of simile, or the irony of sarcasm or litotes may involve the emphasis of one's meaning by deliberate use of language that states the direct opposite of the truth, or drastically and obviously understates a factual connection.

>> ^flechette:

I thought things like saying 'Isn't this nice' while a plane crashes and saying 'What nice weather we're having' while a hurricane rips off the roof is called being sarcastic, and has nothing at all to do with irony.
The 'unsinkable' Titanic sinking on her maiden voyage is ironic. Four U.S. Intelligence services bungling an investigation to the point where they're arresting/shooting each other because they're too hard-headed to share information with each other isn't ironic, it's just dumb. A terrorist suicide bomber getting the wrong address and blowing up a terrorist safe house would be ironic, because not only is it terrible terrorism, it'd still be terroristic.

Hey Sarzy.

"Someone being wrong about something isn't automatically irony." No, that's not what I was saying at all! If the guy is perfectly aware that they won't be arresting anybody and yet still comes out with a crazy line like that, they are being ironic! It's all about intonation with verbal irony (hard to express in text). "All languages use pitch semantically, that is, as intonation, for instance for emphasis, to convey surprise or irony, or to pose a question."

Have look at linguistic usage disputes and cosmic irony.

"It's a death row pardon two minutes too late" is an example of the "irony" Alanis Morrisette used. It's confused with cosmic irony, but it's really 'the mere "coincidental or unexpected"'. It's a popular understanding of irony. "A lifeguard drowning" is the same thing. One doesn't expect a lifeguard to drown, but it isn't ironic because it doesn't "describes a discrepancy between the expected result and actual results." What if someone held a lifeguard underwater and they drowned? How would that be ironic in any way? Maybe you'd have more of an argument with some context, like the lifeguard went to save someone's life and ended up drowning (or near drowning) in the attempt while the victim escaped alive. Or as dannym3141 suggests, they kill the person they're trying to save.

Take a look at the bulletproof glass example on wikipedia. It's (situational) irony because bulletproof glass should stop bullets and normal glass shouldn't. If it were normal glass the bullet would go straight through and miss the president. Because it is bulletproof, it bounces off and hits the president. Situational irony. Compare that with your seatbelt example. Does anyone claim that a seatbelt would save your life in an incident that occurs underwater? I doubt even the wildest marketer would claim such a thing. It's not irony because seatbelts should assist in a collision with another vehicle, an impact collision, where the impact would normally kill/heavily injure you. Water isn't going to do that. A response of "but seatbelts should save your life!" ain't going to cut it.

My example of "pleasant day" when it's raining is an example of verbal irony (i.e. "a disparity of expression and intention: when a speaker says one thing but means another, or when a literal meaning is contrary to its intended effect."). You don't need to try to belittle it (or me) with "lesser-used" and "if it's irony at all." I'm not trying to attack you or bring you down.

Having read the situational irony as described in wikipedia, I think the video title is correct. It is ironic. The expected result is one or more terrorists being arrested; the actual result is that they're all COPs (of a form). My example ("four arrests in one!") is a verbal irony statement because clearly you can't arrest any of the people.

I must admit, I don't really like situational irony, it can be so easily confused with coincidence and unexpected situations, and so one ends up with endless discussions about irony (such as this one). If only we could only ditch it and go back to dramatic and verbal irony I'd be a lot happier. Nevertheless, the examples on wikipedia are pretty good. It needs to be read closely, so the expected/actual dilemma can be uncovered.

On re-reading your initial comment, your cancer drug example is a good example of situational irony. The lifeguard and seatbelt ones, one the other hand, would need a lot more context before they could become ironic.

>> ^Sarzy:

>> ^ledpup:
Well, this may be a trap, but Sarzy, none of your examples are ironic. They're all Alanis Morissette irony. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony. E.g. The image of a person holding a sign that says "I can't afford an actual sign" is a perfectly good example of irony. All your examples are just things that happen. Irony is all about truth and the assertion of it by proposing its negation. Eg Saying "Gee, what a pleasant day we're having" when there is a hurricane outside that is ripping off the roofs of houses. That's ironic.
Irony has to be the most misunderstood of all English words.

No, my examples are all correctly ironic -- going by the information on the wikipedia page you linked to, they are situational irony, which is almost always what people are referring to when they call something ironic (whether they're using the term correctly or not). Your hurricane example, if it's irony at all (which is debatable), would be dramatic irony, which is definitely a lesser-used variety of the term.



And I really don't see how your example would make this video ironic. Someone being wrong about something isn't automatically irony.