Irony & Covid

“Isn’t Covid just amazing? I love it,” my brother would say to me. Then I would respond back with “Yes, there’s nothing better.” My brother and I would make sarcastic comments all the time while in quarantine together, and then we would go back to sitting in silence since there was nothing else to talk about. We didn’t know it then, but we were using a form of verbal irony. Verbal irony is when a person says the opposite of what they are truly thinking or feeling. It can be very similar to sarcasm.

I remember a lot of times people, including myself, would use verbal irony and I’m not really sure why. Maybe it’s to still have a sense of humor, which can be a coping mechanism during difficult times. Or maybe it’s just because people felt that saying “Covid is the worst” was being overused so they decided to switch it up. Even though, at the time, I had no clue this was verbal irony, I would always enjoy when people would use it. I liked it because it always made me laugh, but also because I was really able to relate with someone when they would use it. It can be hard to tell others how we are really feeling, so using verbal irony helped people and helped me express my true feelings in a lighthearted way. So when my brother would say to me “Isn’t Covid amazing? I love it,” I knew what he was really trying to say. I knew he was saying to me this is the worst and I hate it so much. And when I would respond back with “Yes, there’s nothing better,” he knew that I was saying “I understand you and I feel the same way. This is awful.” It allowed us to connect on a deeper level, to understand each other and have a sense of humor with each other.