On Sarcasm

Here's a quote by a person:

> And make no mistake: irony tyrannizes us. The reason why our pervasive cultural irony is at once so powerful and so unsatisfying is that an ironist is impossible to pin down. All irony is a variation on a sort of existential poker-face. All U.S. irony is based on an implicit "I don't really mean what I say." So what does irony as a cultural norm mean to say? That it's impossible to mean what you say? That maybe it's too bad it's impossible, but wake up and smell the coffee already? Most likely, I think, today's irony ends up saying: "How very banal to ask what I mean." Anyone with the heretical gall to ask an ironist what he actually stands for ends up looking like a hysteric or a prig. And herein lies the oppressiveness of institutionalized irony, the too-successful rebel: the ability to interdict the question without attending to its content is tyranny. It is the new junta, using the very tool that exposed its enemy to insulate itself.

In the same spirit is John Barnes's I Hate Snark [1] blog post. An excerpt:

> Snark is the universal solvent of cultural conversation. Someone mentions Hemingway; you mention cross-dressing, drinking, and short choppy sentences. Not only did you not have to read Hemingway, you have one-upped the other person by not having read it; you know more about it than they do because you know the important thing, that Hemingway doesn't need to be read.

[1] http://thatjohnbarnes.blogspot.com/2011/12/i-hate-snark.html

I'm not sure I agree with the author here. I do understand the point, but it seems like a rather rigid and reductive understanding.

Sure, if you're only ever responding with sarcasm it's going to have an effect similar to what the author describes—it brings a certain insincerity to the progression of a conversation, especially in groups. But not every conversation or idle thought needs a well-reasoned dialectic attached to it. And parsing out every idea logically is often tedious and tiresome.

It feels like the author is really talking about some other, larger societal issue—intellectual laziness. And while sarcasm might be an overused tool for the many who cannot be bothered to engage in actual discussions, sarcasm in itself is certainly not the enemy here.

> say it was “just a joke.”

I also hear "I was being ironic." which seems to be popular but an incorrect pet peeve[0].

[0] https://www.vocabulary.com/articles/chooseyourwords/irony-sa...

> To distinguish irony from satire and sarcasm, remember that irony pertains to situations while satire and sarcasm are forms of expression. People make satire and sarcasm happen. Irony is just there.

Nice article bro