The implicit meaning of ‘freed from irony’ and two other questions

The implicit meaning of ‘freed from irony’ and two other questions

The passage below is from Fathoms: The World in the Whale Hardcover by Rebecca Giggs.

Grebowicz attaches this feeling — cute aggression — to technology. The need to connect, she argues, extends in two directions: the desire to be closer to animals, and the desire to make meaningful contact with other people. A selfie with a darling animal might be one of the few remaining digital forms in which a demonstration of heightened pure emotion, and enthusiasm, is freed from irony. Miniature intensities, these pictures make a show of relinquishing power to the animal’s untroubled virtue, its goodness. The animal is artless: it can’t pose. It doesn’t know what a camera is for. That kind of authenticity is currency, online. Yet, the crowd on Santa Teresita beach, I keep coming back to the brutality of their longing: what looks like a loss of control, rather than a carefully staged exercise of it.

In the previous paragraph, ‘cute aggression’ is said to be the violent impulse caused by seeing images of adorable animals that the research participants tends to squash and pop the bubble wrap they were offered.

Here, I have three questions on bold-faced phrases.

First, ‘freed from irony’. Literally I think it means ‘without irony’. But in this context I don’t know what that irony means. I have my thought. To me this irony means to love cute animals but at the same time to have an impulse to harm them. (Am I right?) Still, even if I am right I’m not clear about why a selfie with a darling animal could be the act of showing enthusiasm but free from irony. Does it because a selfie doesn’t cause any physical harm to the animal in picture? (Am I right?)

Second, the meaning of ‘Miniature intensities.’ This phrase gives me nothing. I can’t even bring up any wild guess with this. But let me give you my meager guess. A selfie is small but it intense impact to people who see it. (Am I right?)

Last, the meaning of ‘relinquishing power.’ It seems to mean the power of the selfie animals to make people who see it be completely disarmed to the cuteness of the animals that the selfie doesn’t incur violent impulse to those who see it. (Am I right?)

Thanks in advance.