I am a great admirer and longtime appreciator of irony. I was referring to the medium of internet threads, in which answers come hard and fast out of nowhere and in which context is very often not well enough established to allow for the precise perception of such subtleties of tone and language as irony requires. But you may, if you wish, disregard my clumsy self defense and choose instead to think that I was just being dumb. It happens.

You need not defend irony, though.

It sometimes seems that what flourishes best in this medium is the non sequitur.