Irony and internet culture

[7Pebbles]

It seems pretty obvious that irony is a big force in internet culture today. Shitposting, satire, and other meta jokes are everywhere, especially in places where a type of content has reached saturation. Things like amogus or fortnite provide large examples, but this happens within subcultures as well. What is less obvious to me is how we all collectively got here. I understand why we use satire and sarcasm in memes and such, but I'm having a hard time tracing its origin back culturally speaking since I wasn't really internet-culture-conscious for a lot of its evolution. So I thought I'd open the conversation to a larger audience.

What do you think of present-day internet culture and humor?
What factors led to satire and irony playing such a heavy role in internet culture?

I myself tend to prefer some good synthwave/outrun to vaporwave, but I've come to really appreciate vaporwave's visuals. Being new on the scene of vaporwave, I can't yet draw any solid or meaningful parallels, but I feel like vaporwave is often making a social commentary on saturation of various topics and subjects, and I'm curious to consider the parallels between vaporwave and the state of the internet as a whole today.

Thoughts?

 

[wot]

I didn't start seeing this on the mainstream internet until the early 10s. Until then it was mainly confined to sites like SA and 4chan. So maybe it was popularized by the likes of Weird Twitter (an offshoot of FYAD) and the Tumblr funnymen who aped them? I don't really know.