love-ironically
Explanation
The Joke
A man proposes to a woman, saying he is "prepared to marry, have children, and grow old together, but only if we can do it ironically." She responds "Eh, okay." What follows is a montage of their entire life together -- getting married ("Guess who's contributing to the divorce statistics!"), having a baby ("Another fine contribution to climate change!"), raising a child ("Congrats on joining the cultural rat race, kid"), growing old ("I really do love you, Dad" / "Hey you, pronouns!"), and finally death -- all done with ironic detachment. The tombstone reads "Death is so cliched" and the final caption says "Dave, by grit and will alone, died without ever having had a sincere emotion."
The comic traces an entire human life lived through the lens of ironic detachment. Every meaningful milestone -- marriage, parenthood, aging, love, death -- is filtered through a protective layer of sarcasm and cynicism. The man cannot experience any of these moments sincerely; he must always frame them as jokes or commentary on social norms.
The Humor
The comic is a pointed satire of irony culture -- the tendency, especially prevalent in certain intellectual and online circles, to use ironic detachment as a shield against vulnerability. By showing an entire life lived this way, Weinersmith illustrates the tragedy of never allowing yourself to be genuinely moved or emotionally present. The final epitaph -- praising the man for dying "without ever having had a sincere emotion" as if it were an achievement of "grit and will" -- drives home the absurdity: avoiding sincerity requires enormous effort, and the reward is a life entirely devoid of genuine feeling. The comic asks whether irony, taken to its extreme, becomes its own kind of prison.