?Irony is a key feature of the pop literature around 2000 and of theoretically ambitious music journalism around 1980. But whereas the pop program of the 1980s still was integrated into emancipatory concepts of 'counterculture', this meaningful context has since then declined noticeably. As a consequence, problematic aspects of an unlimited ironic treatment of the relationship to the world come to the fore. But what to do if no alternatives are within reach? This focus of this study is on the answers Diedrich Diederichsen, Rainald Goetz, Christian Kracht, Florian Illies and Benjamin von Stuckrad-Barre give to this question.