Irony and the loss of sincerity

Lately I've been thinking about how much we use irony.
Today, humor has so many layers of irony. This kind of humor is used so frequently,
that I've started questioning if we're getting less used to speaking in a genuine, sincere way.
Don't get me wrong, I love joking with my friends. Irony is more than okay
when sprinkled in a conversation or in a moment when you know that everyone else is joking.
It would suck to be serious all the time!

However, even with my real life friends I sometimes feel like
I can't have a conversation that's a bit more serious without them making a joke,
referencing a meme or something of the sort. It just kills the conversation for me
and makes it feel like they are not interested at all in having an actual conversation.
Maybe it's because they're afraid to express their opinion or to ask about more information,
or they're really just not interested. But in that case,
I'd much prefer if they straight up told me so.

I feel like since the pandemic (when we were forced to stay home
and started spending much more time on our phones) it's become
more difficult to separate the internet from real life and
part of the way we behave is now influenced by the internet itself.

The current mainstream internet humor, however, has reached such a level of absurdity,
that I don't even get it anymore. All those memes and brain rot stuff
that everyone around me is watching and laughing at... What's the point of it?
What's the fun in that nonsense? Too much of that stuff now is also made with AI,
so it feels more like easy content to get views and money rather than
some real person who took the time to create something, no matter how stupid it is.

There's a time for irony and sarcasm. But being ironic all the time is not good.
It kind of feels like a a way to avoid dealing with our feelings,
thoughts and reality itself. Sure, it can help us cope with hard moments,
but sometimes it gets to a point that it becomes pointless and just not genuine.

When used so often, irony loses its value. It should overturn our expectations,
that's why we laugh. But now it's not as surprising to hear someone say
something completely absurd, especially online.
We got so used to it, it's become the ordinary. It's weird. It just feels... fake.