Sincerity is the new irony

I stood in the lobby of the Javits Center on Sunday with a great sorrow welling up in my heart. New York ComicCon was over. Everyone was shuffling slowly out into the sunset, costumes limp and dragging on the ground. We'd looked forward to it for so long; blogged and tweeted and re-blogged about it in giddy anticipation; fondly remembered past conventions; met with friends to compare spreadsheets and synchronize our schedules; shopped for costume accessories; and maybe we sat alone in our apartments wearing our costumes weeks before the event JUST TO MAKE SURE THEY'RE COMFORTABLE.

I have entirely legitimate reasons for this.

Then we went to the Con.

And then it was time to go home.

I go to these things for a lot of reasons. Camaraderie is one. There's nothing like being in a crowd of 100,000 people who like the same things you like. Visual stimulation is another. My favorite game to play as a little kid was dress-up and I love that I can be a grown-up and still play that game with folks who will always take it way more seriously than I do.

But the main reason I go to ComicCon is because of the love. What love? ALL the love. Love of games, love of toys, love of costumes, love of comic books, love of movies, love of television, love of art and stories, love of artists and storytellers--love that I have for these things and love that others have for the things I love. That sort of love and sincerity isn't really in vogue right now. That pissy "I was into X before it was cool" trope is a siren call for the terminally hip and permanently dissatisfied, as if being cynical and jaded with life is a shortcut to wisdom.

I say thee Nay!

Thor reference!

I love sincerity! I'm sick of irony. I don't want to like things "ironically" or be "ironically" into comics and cartoons or "ironically" attend ComicCon. I just want to like things. I want to collect comics and quote "The Simpsons" and fritter away my hours reading exhaustive Wikipedia articles on "Torchwood" and "Game of Thrones." I want to bore my co-workers with my Flickr stream of ComicCon photos and tell them that I had the BEST time and MEAN it, goddamnit! That's what being a nerd is all about. It's about loving what you love without being ashamed of it.

So I'm declaring sincerity the new irony. According to data I just made up, 3 out of 4 disaffected youth now have tattoos of that slogan in Helvetica font. The last disaffected youth has it tattooed in Comic Sans because it reminds her of old Superman word bubbles. And where was she this weekend? That's right, she was at the Con.