conceptual vocabulary:

metamodernism

metamodernism a proposed contemporary cultural movement away from the reigning postmodern mode.
rather than a simple return to the old rigidity of modernism, it holds onto some lessons and habits from postmodernism, forging a new synthesis.

most of us grew up in a postmodern world.
here, the daily offerings of the media industry are typically characterised by a combination of ironic posturing, noncommittal (though frequently hypocritical) relativism, and antisocial cynicism.
as such, a lot of us are very sick of postmodernism, which began as counterculture, but is now just culture.
the new counterculture, therefore, is defined by the kind of open-hearted sincerity, conviction and investment in things that the postmodern cynics lack.

an example would be a creator acting as if their creation is silly and frivolous when in fact they take it quite seriously, in order for the creator and/or audience to feel more comfortable exploring it, and thus realising its full depth and significance.
this would be a kind of ironic gesture moderated by sincerity and vulnerability, whereas textbook postmodern irony would require a more obstinate insistence that the thing in question is not serious, drawing on a categorical denial of the possibility of anything really mattering.

another example would be the stylistic written choice of dropping all capitals and not fully spacing apart paragraphs, to look casual and throwaway.
this could be a purely postmodern act of pretentious apathy, acting too cool to care.
or in the metamodern mode, it could be an attempt to convey humility and gentleness so that what’s written comes across in the right spirit.

(self-referentiality has been carried over into metamodernism, too.)

anyway, metamodernists often start from irony because it’s been our daily bread until now; because it’s comfortable, even if we don’t like that.
so we play with it and try to turn it towards more sincere ends.
join us.

david foster wallace:

...irony, entertaining as it is, serves an almost exclusively negative function. it’s critical and destructive, a ground-clearing. surely this is the way our postmodern fathers saw it. but irony’s singularly unuseful when it comes to constructing anything to replace the hypocrisies it debunks...

what do you do when postmodern rebellion becomes a pop-cultural institution? for this of course [suggests] why avante-garde irony and rebellion have become dilute and malign. they have been absorbed, emptied, and redeployed by the very televisual establishment they had originally set themselves athwart.