One more thing to consider for any other europeans thinking of moving to America:

1, they don't understand irony

2, they carry guns

Ah, I think I see the problem. We call that "sarcasm". Quite a lot of us get that just fine, though of course the internet can always turn up at least one person who doesn't. "Irony" is reserved for events that are only ironic in the light of other events; death by drowning isn't "ironic" until it happens to a swimming instructor, for instance. You can't really say something ironic, it has to happen. (And if you say something ironic it is a description of a thing that happened.)

This is, in part, incorrect. "Irony" is in its original (from Ancient Greek) and primary usage a rhetorical form -- in other words, something intentionally used by a speaker. Experts disagree on whether "verbal irony" and "sarcasm" are the same thing -- sarcasm might require a kind of sharp, biting tone. But the original comment is certainly ironic.

A situation like your drowning example is also irony; sometimes to be explicitly this is called "situational irony" as opposed to "verbal irony."

I apologize for being pedantic; mostly I just wanted a justified link to Silva Rhetoricae: http://rhetoric.byu.edu/figures/I/irony.htm (but see also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony).

Allow me to be pedantic right back. I did not say "sarcasm is". I said "we call that sarcasm". It's not really to label a description of how a word is used as "incorrect" and use a proscription as evidence. My fourth sentence was a bit regrettably absolutely phrased but the context of my statement should be set by then.

I don't even care if that's true of all of us Americans, it's true of enough. (The idea that Americans don't get "sarcasm" is very foreign to me; oh, I certainly know people who don't get it but we seem a fairly sarcastic culture to me.)

Okay. I think those sources are descriptive, but to be sure, here is the American Heritage Dictionary (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/irony), an explicitly descriptive dictionary about American usage. It seems to agree with the other sources that irony can be and is often used in this case.

On the other hand, one can reasonably believe that every dictionary is, by its nature as a reference book, primarily prescriptive (and proscriptive) and therefore cannot be reliably descriptive. If so, then it seems we do have to go only with personal observations.

In terms of personal observations, I agree with you that many Americans I know would use "sarcasm" in this case and not use "irony." I think I (along with many other Americans, maybe fewer than the other group?) would use "irony" and probably not use "sarcasm" because it doesn't have that particular, hard-to-miss sarcastic tone of voice.

That's true - should have said sarcasm, but I can't change it because of the guns = irony joke. Now that's ironic.

Guns are pretty irony

And most importantly, we use periods where you guys use commas. ;p

That wasn't irony. THIS is irony (i.e. that the person who called out the other guy for not understanding irony, happens to not actually know the difference between irony and sarcasm himself) :P

ewjordan's Law of Irony: in any Internet discussion of sufficient length where the word "irony" is used, someone will call out the poster for using it incorrectly. This is true whether or not the original usage was proper or not, and with high probability the original complaint will be followed up by a comment on the irony of the critic not understanding the definition of the word "irony". Bonus points are awarded based on how many levels this back and forth continues.

Alanis Morissette will be brought up in at least 50% of these cases, though the precise frequency depends inversely on the level of sophistication of the forum members.

Oblig. oatmeal link: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/irony

Sarcasm is a subset of irony.

What? I didn't say anything outright wrong, though it's a subject of some controversy. See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony#Verbal_irony_and_sarcasm

More specifically: Some psycholinguistic theorists (e.g., Gibbs, 2000) suggest that sarcasm ("Great idea!", "I hear they do fine work."), hyperbole ("That's the best idea I have heard in years!"), understatement ("Sure, what the hell, it's only cancer..."), rhetorical questions ("What, does your spirit have cancer?"), double entendre ("I'll bet if you do that, you'll be communing with spirits in no time...") and jocularity ("Get them to fix your bad back while you're at it.") should all be considered forms of verbal irony.

Few crimes deserve a harsher sentence.

glad to see the reddit crowd made it over

"If your account is less than a year old, please don't submit comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. (It's a common semi-noob illusion.)"

http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Not an illusion in this case: that deep hierarchy of one-liners dominating the top of the thread is unmistakably Redditesque.

granted. but in my 276 days since creating my account (I've been reading for over a year), this is the first thread I've actually been let down by, where there are highly upvoted posts which add zero value to the discussion.

Man, it's the Internet.

indeed. Sadly, above your comment is the start of a pun thread. The first I've seen on HN, and regrettably doubtfully the last.

Ugh. Yeah, that wasn't the set of comments I expected to generate either.

Sometimes I post a comment that I personally expect to be genuinely worth 27 points. That wasn't one of them. You have my sincere apologies.

This is actually directed at kiuyhjk's reply, not your's philwelch, but... uh, there's no reply link on kiuyhjk's post in my browser (Chrome 6.0.472.51 beta on Fedora 12)

Anyway, kiuyhjk - very funny post, very meta

HN policy to avoid flame wars, AFAIK: the reply button is delayed before it appears for a specific post. seems to be around 4 minutes, at least for the deepness of this conversation.

so, just be more patient in the future ...

Oh. OK, Thanks for that. I wonder how I managed to miss that little detail! And hey, bonus point, I just discovered that when people continue to downvote you, it still hits your karma, even if the visible post count stops at -4. Two things I've learned about HN today :)