Hope I'm not misunderstanding your comment and over-egging the reply. Irony isn't a particularly useful concept when dealing with speech on the internet, which

Hope I'm not misunderstanding your comment and over-egging the reply. Irony isn't a particularly useful concept when dealing with speech on the internet, which is fragmented and in ambiguous contexts. And it goes against HN guidelines to proffer the most generous and sincere writing/interpretation possible. There's a difference between irony and sarcasm, prevalent here, and both definitions are largely abused or misunderstood these days. Look for words like "seemed", which invokes the concept of appearance and therefore implicitly casts doubt on appearances. What I am conveying here, by "narrative" (story/account) is that as a mature person, with some experience of the matters, I have many reservations about the way things were told to me growing up by "authority" figures from my past. That's not really irony. More of a sceptical tone. Sceptical about the whole way that "war narratives" and public opinion is spun.