Better, More Clever Ways to Convey Sarcasm
ENGLISH OFFERS lots of clever ways to communicate sarcasm, sass and snark without having to resort to some lame, made-up, lazy excuse for a punctuation mark. The SarcMark will be the Esperanto of punctuation — a good idea at the time that has built up its own (small) cult of adherents but has become virtually irrelevant.
The SarcMark simply feels too artificial and inauthentic. Our existing language offers various means to communicate sarcasm. I’m a big fan of the ironic use of ™ and ® and even quotation marks (see three paragraphs above) to denote the sass. For many sarcastic comments, I like this emoticon :-|
On Twitter, inventive juxtapositions of #hashtags effectively convey sarcasm. Similarly, some people, like my dear Junkie1, use tags in much the same way on their WordPress-powered blogs.
This SarcMark simply seems like a lazy way to avoid writing well enough for a reader to infer the sarcasm. Sarcasm shouldn’t require a neon sign. It’s supposed to reach around from the side and slap you upside da’ head.
If you’re a writer who needs a SarcMarc then perhaps you shouldn’t be attempting sarcasm. If you’re a reader who requires one, you may get the fact a joke’s been made, but that doesn’t mean you’ve gotten the joke.
P.S. I’m bracing myself for attacks from the Esperanto-lovers. Those people aren’t kidding around.
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Hence my tweet reply to ChrisPirillo
@ChrisPirillo Sure, I’d love to spend two bucks to express myself with a graphic that no one else can see unless they also pony up $2. :-/
I agree with your additional points as well. I predict that the sarcmark will gather a small population who think it’s great, and they’ll probably be militant about evangelizing the rest of us so they can justify their expenditure of two dollars for the ugly thing.
Oh, and I suppose the last sarcmark in the commercial is close to being sarcasm.
Nice commercial. :-/
Or as I might reword it:
Nice commercial. … NOT!
Good point, Solak.
I’ll concede the last SarcMark® in the commercial was actually sarcastic. Ironically, because it was making fun of itself.