SwagNotes on Love, Hope, and Sincerity in the Post-Ironic Wasteland
by August Kaasa Sundgaard
this piece is part of OPTIMISED LOVE, our first digital collection of works.
watch the video portion of this work above.
I remember recently finding Britney Spears’ resurged Instagram page and feeling like I wanted to cry. It was around 2022; Britney was getting towards the end of the conservatorship, and the liberty that came with it seemed to be reflected in her newfound unhinged style of posting. On her feed, I found AI slop, dance videos from strange angles and stripping videos with tiny monkey emojis barely keeping her from getting censored. What made me so emotional, though, was not these provoking posts, but that all of her posting style was straight out of 2010 (her grid looked like a mood board from that time): Whitagram frames, Tumblr-core galaxy visuals, earnest inspirational quotes, simple ironic image macros, IG filters (the original ones, not the AR ones). It almost seemed like her strict conservatorship had made her posting freeze in the late 2000s–early 2010s ethos of wholesomeness and hope, where meaning could easily be decoded, and sincerity and irony were still easily distinguishable. Remember the simple irony of Cool Story, Bro, Condescending Wonka, and Someecards? Or the sincerity of #JustGirlyThings, SwagNotes, and the collective optimism of We Are the World (Haiti) and Waka Waka? A time when we could all agree that Minions were cute?
In the essay “Beyond Based and Cringe,” Nate Sloan examines shifts in digital cultural production, particularly in relation to sincerity and irony—something that became strikingly clear as I scrolled through Britney Spears’ Instagram page. He suggests that the constant layering of irony on top of culture, driven by the ever-present mediation of social media, not only blurs these lines but also creates a context where even once-innocent beliefs can evolve into something more sinister, all because they are consumed within the same layer ironic framework. The result is a kind of "irony poisoning," where users, detached from meaning, can gradually slip into beliefs or aesthetics that were originally just edgy jokes. This dynamic makes it increasingly difficult to discern where ironic detachment ends and sincere engagement begins—something that feels particularly present in the way media and personal expression are consumed today, where the very act of posting or engaging is mediated by a hyper-aware self-objectification and constant evaluation of how one might be perceived by others. Writer and poster Honor Levy captures a similar collapse of meaning in My First Book:
“Everything is wrong. We just got here and the world is already ending. When things go wrong, we laugh. When things seem pretend, they’re funny. When it turns out it’s real, it’s even funnier (...) The separation between spectacle and real life broke. It stayed broken. Nothing is IRL and everything is IRL.”
Levy’s insight aligns with Sloan’s analysis of irony poisoning: when the separation between spectacle and reality breaks down, everything becomes material for irony, and the sincerity that once marked our emotional expressions dissolves into performance. In this context, even the most authentic emotions are rendered hollow because they’re constantly mediated through the lens of ironic detachment. In another part of her book, Levy writes:
“Like fireworks or electric scooters or huffing glue, irony can be fun, but also dangerous. If a joke isn’t going to make someone pause and think and act and look at their hands for their shovel then maybe the joke isn’t very funny?”
Here, Levy directly acknowledges what Sloan describes as the danger of irony: it can be intoxicating and fleeting, but ultimately self-destructive. Though I don't feel irony poisoned yet, I do feel a growing sense of detachment, as if every piece of content exists in the same emotionally flattened space, constantly circulating in a feedback loop of consumption and production. I envied Britney from having seemingly escaped this more sinister turn of internet culture, and it reminded me of different times, before this turn to hyperreferentiality, of how I remember sharing this ethos back in 2011. I got so emotional because it was so beautiful to see someone share inspirational quotes knowing that she actually means it and not as a self-aware, performative wink to past internet culture (every day is a new start fr).
But it’s not that simple. Despite my longing, I know that what I’m nostalgic for was never truly there. That’s how nostalgia works, right? As Svetlana Boym writes in The Future of Nostalgia, the nostalgic impulse is to “obliterate history and turn it into a collective mythology (...), refusing to surrender to the irreversibility of time that plagues the human condition.” What I felt while scrolling through Britney’s Instagram was precisely this: a desire to step outside the relentless churn of internet culture and return to a mythologized past where posting felt like self-expression, not self-branding. It was a longing for a time before our identities were entangled in advanced algorithms, accelerated feedback loops, and the endless cycle of social media consumption and production. But of course, this was a myth. As Sloan reminds me, the sincerity of the late 2000s and early 2010s was never truly that authentic; it was hollow. He argues that sincerity in cultural production at the time was rather a tool to “inoculate a public to the unvarnished miseries of late capitalism.”
More specifically in the case of posting, the inspirational, sincere, lovepilled, and hopecore images and quotes that I thought I missed were often just reflections of a self-optimizing, individualistic achievement society. In The Spirit of Hope, Byung Chul Han critiques this ideology of positive psychology for psychologizing and privatizing suffering, shifting responsibility for happiness onto individuals rather than addressing the societal structures that mediate it. The ideology of positive psychology, distinct from real hope, permeated the internet culture of the early 2010s, where suffering was flattened into a personal failure to stay “positive” and “grateful.” Far from being genuinely hopeful, these sentiments were commodified, molded by the incentive structures of social networks that rewarded surface-level positivity and aspirational imagery. The cultural reaction to this aesthetic logic seemed to culminate in the "woke" movements of the late 2010s, which rejected the earlier era’s optimism as naive and willfully ignorant of societal structures and systemic injustices. The lovepilled sincerity of 2010s internet culture often espoused a colorblind, depoliticized understanding of identity, which many saw as incompatible with the growing demand for an intersectional and structural critique of society. While I largely agree that the 2010s were out of touch in significant ways, I wonder if the pendulum may have swung too far. In rejecting the hollow sincerity, hope and wholesomeness of that period, did we also lose something worthwhile— however fleeting or flawed it might have been? Can we acknowledge differences while still singing “we are the world”?
It sure seems like we need it. In 2011, Britney Spears released “Till the World Ends,” an apocalyptic song about partying. Today, it’s often included in the “recession pop” canon—a (retroactively defined) genre that emerged during and in the aftermath of the global financial crisis that can be defined by its frenetic beats, euphoric hooks, and lyrics about dancing and enjoying life in the face of chaos. Songs like Usher’s “DJ Got Us Fallin’ in Love” with lines like “Dance like it’s the last night of your life” and Ke$ha’s “Die Young” proclaiming, “Let’s make the most of the night like we’re gonna die young,” epitomize this ethos, giving a kind of hope in the shape of hedonistic relief to the surrounding turmoil. It seems like recession pop is a musical parallel to the hopeful, sincere posting of the 2010s. Maybe my longing towards it is in the fact that we’re once again facing a new set of dooms: climate collapse, the looming tech apocalypse, and the global rise of fascism. But perhaps the need for sincerity is even more urgent now, considering that the hyper-referential, irony-laden posting culture that followed is arguably a contributing factor to at least two of these crises. What began as detached online humor has, in some cases, evolved into a radicalization funnel, exemplified by the likes of Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and U.S. VP J.D. Vance, all of whom have, over the past five years, moved through a trajectory of irony-pilled neo monarchism, à la Curtis Yarvin, toward a disturbing embrace of authoritarian ideals. In such a landscape, maybe it’s time to reconsider the value of sincere posting—not as nostalgia, but as a necessary counterbalance to an increasingly cynical digital culture.
But is that even possible? It should be, right? 2010s culture is back—you can hear it in Snow Strippers’ Avicii inspired chords, The Dare and The Hellp's electroclash revival, MGNA Crrrta’s dubstep callbacks. Skinny jeans, indies sleaze is back, indie sleaze has returned, and Tumblr-core aesthetics flood my feed. I have also seen the visual language of 2010s ‘hopecore’ being referenced in music videos, like Bassvictim’s Alice and Black Country, New Road’s Science Fair and Track X, referencing the wholesome relatability-posting era of #justgirlythings. But something’s off. Alice leans into visuals of friendship and intimacy, yet the lyrics spiral into isolation and digital alienation, exposing a disconnect between what we see and what we hear. Science Fair borrows the past’s sincere imagery, but Isaac Wood’s anxious delivery and the relentless repetition of "references, references, references" in the first verse feels more like surrender than hope—proof that everything has already been consumed and repackaged. These works don’t revive 2010s hope; they haunt it, circling familiar imagery stripped of warmth, and watching them doesn’t spark optimism; they feel like echoes of a lost time, emptied and repurposed for an era too self-aware to believe again.
Yet, in some corners, sincerity seems to be making a genuine return. Here are some examples:
● Addison Rae iss posting about how much she loves music.
● Charli XCX 2024 song “Everything is Romantic”.
● BabyMorocco, in a 2025 interview with Pitchfork, where he praises La Roux’s 2008 self-titled album for its sincerity, admitting it’s something he’s trying to tap into in his own music.
● Bladees 20202 track Noblest Strife.
● Ethel Cain’s Tumblr plea for sincerity, in which she addresses the overwhelming ironic response to her work by people on the internet. She writes, "I miss genuine passion" and reflects on how, as a society, we've lost touch with the intense love for things that once made us feel alive.
Out of all these contemporary forms of sincerity, Honor Levy’s words in My First Book feel like a bridge between the mythologized past and our hypermediated present. While the earnestness of Britney’s 2010s-era posts evokes nostalgia for a seemingly simpler digital age, Levy’s work speak to the complexities of sincerity in a world where irony has become both armor and weapon. Rather than resurrecting the past; it interrogates it, presenting a hope that acknowledges the absurdity of our times without surrendering to nihilism.
Byung-Chul Han’s distinction between optimism and hope is helpful here. The 2010s’ inspirational posting and recession pop anthems traded in optimism—a shallow, closed system of positivity that ignored structural darkness. Levy, however, embodies hope: a searching, active engagement with uncertainty. “Unlike positive thinking,” Han writes, “hope does not turn away from the negative… It remains mindful of it.” This tension pulses through Levy’s prose. In DO IT COWARD, set in a hauntological, rundown NYC arcade, Honor Levy’s character channels the hopecore sincerity of the 2010s—“just do it,” “we are all in this together,” “live or die trying”—while simultaneously acknowledging the hyperreferential world we’re stuck in: “staring at the fourth wall, mind melting, no-clipping, glitching.” She captures the instability of now—“Be afraid because it is life”— while insisting on hope: “Be brave because it’s death.” Then comes the final refrain: “How lucky are we to be a part of this RPG?”. To call life a “game” in 2025 is to acknowledge the absurdity of navigating planetary collapse, doomscroll nihilism, and the collapse of shared reality—without denying that playing still matters. Her sincerity isn’t a rejection of hyperreferentiality but a survival tactic within it. It’s about engaging with the game, knowing full well it’s rigged. Not because we believe in winning, but because opting out isn’t an option.
A similar tone can be read in her essay, in Internet Girl, where she dissects algorithmic absurdity with tragicomic precision: “Instagram has this magic titty-finding algorithm, and the algorithm is always learning, just like you and me when we were eleven and alone… twirling around our rooms.” The passage calls out platform paternalism but lingers on the vulnerability of adolescence—a reminder that even our most mediated experiences are rooted in human longing. When she imagines the algorithm “waking up” to its own futility, it’s a glimmer of redemption in the machine.
Levy models a sincerity that isn’t naive but negotiated. It seems like the challenge then isn’t to resurrect 2010s optimism but to forge a new hope, one that embraces complexity without collapsing into cynicism. As Levy reminds us: “The separation between spectacle and real life broke. It stayed broken. Nothing is IRL and everything is IRL.” The task now is to find meaning—and maybe even beauty—in the rubble.
𝓪𝓾𝓰𝓾𝓼𝓽 𝓴𝓪𝓪𝓼𝓪 𝓼𝓾𝓷𝓭𝓰𝓪𝓪𝓻𝓭
August Kaasa Sundgaard is an artist and intern researcher at the Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam. He holds a bachelors degree in Liberal Arts from Leiden University College and is interested in digital culture, post-internet art, and the aesthetics of violence.