Since things are a little slow right now, it's time once again for an AtAT public service announcement, and today's topic is a doozy: Recognizing and Appreciating Irony. Longtime viewers already know that we've had our share of problems with irony over the years, which we can only assume is our own fault; after all, contemporary U.S. society is increasingly irony-free, so it's only to be expected that a wide cross-section of AtAT's viewership might be ill-equipped to process excess doses of the stuff, particularly if it's mixed with another outmoded ingredient known as "subtlety." We use less (a lot less) of the latter than the former, so we usually stay out of trouble, but every once in a while people take us just a hair too seriously about Apple-commissioned ninja attacks, sellouts to Microsoft, or foreign anatomical spellings.

Why are we bringing this up now, you ask? Well, it's because dozens-- no, seriously, dozens-- of AtAT viewers wrote in demanding that we incorporate Divisiontwo Magazine's unfavorable Mac mini review into our plotline and proceed to rip the author at least six new orifices. The only problem, of course, is that Divisiontwo's review is quite clearly a work of satire already. If you didn't recognize it as such, don't feel bad; we all get fished in now and again. Heck, we ourselves crank this junk out for a living (such as it is), and even we frothed good 'n' hard when we first encountered Dr. Richard Paley's insane rants about Apple's insidious conspiracy to "heed not the message of the Lord Jesus Christ." By the time we had done the research and realized that the whole thing was a work of satire, we'd already cranked out a whole scene about it, which we decided to go ahead and broadcast anyway-- with an addendum, of course.

Unfortunately, there's no magic formula when it comes to recognizing irony, but absurdity is usually a helpful earmark-- especially in suspiciously high concentrations across several instances in a single article. In the Divisiontwo piece, for example, you might note the apparently-earnest suggestion that Apple "strike a deal with China to use inmates to assemble the mini" because it's not cheap enough yet, or the straight-faced claim that the mini "might be the perfect computer for grandmothers or autistic children." Note also that the "reviewer" purports to be "a DeVry graduate with an MCSE certification," which is, of course, the most useless qualification imaginable for an unbiased review of a Macintosh (or, for that matter, for just about anything else).

Furthermore, every one of the author's complaints is a criticism that only the most insular Wintel user could make; he bemoans the mini's lack of "a defragmenter or a registry cleaner" (but not the lack of a Registry), rails against claims that the Mac can run Office when he couldn't even get his Windows Office 2003 CD to install, and whines that Mail "can't execute scripts or open attachments without user intervention" right before noting that "in today's climate of non-stop worms, trojans and viruses, releasing a computer with no virus removal software is irresponsible on the part of Apple." There are a ton more-- practically one in every sentence. Notice how most of the complaints about the mini's "shortcomings" actually highlight serious flaws in the Windows architecture instead? Hey, neat-- that's irony!

We know what you're thinking: ignorant reviewers, analysts, and "journalists" make mistakes just like these all the time, so how can you tell when they're intentional and used for satiric effect? Well, consider the degree; the presence of one or two of these howlers might indicate a clueless author with a chronic case of lead poisoning, but there comes a point where you have to assume that anyone brick-stupid enough to have made this many errors would be too imbecilic to have figured out how to use the crayon to write the review in the first place. Of course, problems often arise when the satirist fails to gauge the irony-savviness of its audience and uses an inappropriate degree of subtlety. The problem is compounded in cases involving emotionally-charged subject matter (like, say, ignorant and unfair Mac reviews); just ask master 18-century satirist Jonathan Swift, whose brilliant A Modest Proposal practically caused riots when people thought he was seriously suggesting that the problems of hunger and overpopulation in Ireland could easily be solved by letting people eat babies.

So what can you do when you're not sure? Well, context can help immensely; if you put aside the Mac mini review for a second and scope out the rest of Divisiontwo, you'll find a ton of other articles, most of which you'll identify as obvious satire after the most cursory review. Read things twice, look for excessive absurdity, and consider whether what's said might actually be praising that which it criticizes and vice versa. If, after all that, you're still not sure whether what you're looking at is irony, you may be able to hire a Brit on a consultant basis to help; it's not a guaranteed solution (remember A Modest Proposal), but in general, the UK population seems less irony-deficient that those of us here in the colonies. Must be all those babies they eat.