Layers of Irony

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About

Layers Of Irony refers to an exploitable four-panel web comic of a floating head, also known as Meme Man, having a conversation with another character, in which they refer to "layers of irony" as if irony were an intoxicating substance.

Origin

The image originates from an October 24th, 2015 post in the Facebook meme community "Special meme fresh," which creates many web comics using the "Meme Man" character.^[1] The original post to Facebook has gained over 2,000 likes in five months. The next day, the image was reposted to Tumblr by Special meme fresh."^[2] The Tumblr version of the post has gained over 20,000 notes.

Spread

On February 25th, 2016, YouTuber JeZ uploaded a reading of the comic, which gathered upwards of 780,000 views and 1,900 comments in eight months (shown below).

A voice over recording of the comic was posted to Tumblr on October 27th 2015 by user aberrantkenosis.^[3] The post has since gained over 60,000 notes.(YouTube reupload below.} A post was later made to the Reddit subreddit /r/OutOfTheLoop on November 23, 2015 entitled "What is the meaning of this picture about layers of irony?"^[4] On Tumblr, users have photoshopped different characters into the comic (see Various examples, below) in order to indicate that the characters are being ironic; in addition, Tumblr users have also began to use the phrase "How many layers of irony is [character] on" as a shorthand to discuss irony within different fandoms;^[5] on Twitter, a mutation of the phrase is used to discuss a specific number of layers of irony, i.e. "[Character] is on at least 13 layers of irony right now."^[6]