The SarcMark: What a Great Idea

(Jan. 22) – Some years ago, my family traveled to Fort Myers Beach, Fla., to escape the New England winter and catch some Red Sox spring training games. Things quickly went awry.

We'd rented a small house on the beach, only to find upon arrival that Fort Myers was suffering the worst case of red tide in recent memory. Each morning was occupied by the grim task of burying all the expired marine life that had washed up onto the beach and immediately started stinking. Late afternoons we gathered on the porch to drink vodka tonics and choke on the toxic fumes blowing in from the sea. Each time we left to get away from the beach, we found ourselves locked in the perpetual traffic jam that is coastal Florida.

After two weeks, my father began very clearly losing it. Near the end of the trip, we were out at a restaurant, and he raised a glass. "To the great state of Florida," he proclaimed, and took a drink. Other diners seated near us, thinking he was being serious, looked on approvingly. Then he added, more quietly, "May it sink forever into the Atlantic ocean."

I was reminded of this recently by the news of the release of the SarcMark, an emoticon available for download online by Michigan-based Sarcasm Inc. for $1.99. The company's Web site promises that its users will "never again be misunderstood. Never again waste a good sarcastic line on someone who doesn't get it." It calls upon potential customers to "stand up for sarcasm – it needs a punctuation mark."

Totally. Only there are some problems, the least of which is that sarcasm already sort of has its own punctuation marks -- </sarcasm>, or sometimes ;) -- which have been in use for years and offer the additional advantage of not costing anything.

Another is that the makers of the product, and presumably whatever customers they find, don't seem to know what sarcasm is. The SarcMark Web site offers a promotional video in which a man in a superhero costume runs around insulting people and stamping the SarcMark onto them using a giant rubber stamp. "Let's go!" he yells at a female jogger. "Couple more laps, tubby!" This suggests that the SarcMark is for when you need to be sure it's completely clear to others that you're being an ass.

More importantly, the SarcMark motto, "Tell them how you really feel," is the exact opposite of what skilled wielders of sarcasm seek to accomplish. The point of sarcasm is indeed to convey what you really feel, but to do so without saying it directly. The expert sarcast's trifecta is to unleash a quip that everyone in the room gets save for the intended target, who is forced to stand there glistening with flop sweat, wide-eyed, a grim smile of terror pasted across his face.

That sarcasm has become nearly a default mode of expression for so many is nothing new, but it is interesting, and disheartening, to people who are accustomed to using it in speech try to adapt to using it online. SarcMark and its homemade equivalents are a white flag swung by those who concede they don't have the command of language to pull sarcasm off with words alone. And it'd be a shame if they robbed well-executed sarcasm of its true and necessary power. In times like this, sarcasm can be a handy weapon, a way to find allies, a ready coping mechanism when all others have been exhausted.

The Sarcastic Imperative

Sarcasm is often derided as the lowest form of wit, mainly because you don't have to be even remotely smart to use it. You just have to say the opposite of what you mean, roll your eyes – or insert a SarcMark – and feel superior. This is the rote approach "The Simpsons" memorably lampooned in the famous "Homerpalooza" episode:

"Oh, here comes that cannonball guy," says a slacker concert attendee. "He's cool."

"Are you being sarcastic, dude?" asks his friend.

"I don't even know anymore."

In a May 2009 article in Psychology Today, Elizabeth Svoboda wrote that though practitioners of this sort of low sarcasm "may not be aware of it, sarcasm is their means of indirectly expressing aggression toward others and insecurity about themselves. Wrapping their thoughts in a joke shields them from the vulnerability that comes with directly putting one's opinions out there."

But for all its misuse at the hands of the lazy, witless and craven, sarcasm (from the Greek for "tearing flesh"), can actually serve an important social role. It's a way of sorting social groups, separating the wheat from the chaff. Writing for LiveScience.com, Cornell anthropologist Meredith Small offers an explanation from a workplace context. "The corporate chairman throws out a sarcastic remark and those who 'get' it laugh, smile and gain favor. In the same way, if the chair never makes a remark, sarcastic people are making them behind his or her back, forming a clique by their mutually negative, but funny, comments. Either way, sarcasm plays a role in making and breaking alliances and friendship." If the chairman followed every quip with "I'm being sarcastic," everyone would know to laugh, and the sarcasm itself would no longer serve its purpose.

(Fun historical sidebar: Subordinates wielding sarcasm against their leaders goes back to the Old Testament. In Exodus, the Israelites, understandably fed up with all the wandering, asked Moses, "Was there a lack of graves in Egypt, that you took us here to die in the wilderness?" The phrasing of that crack prefigured about a hundred of years of American comedy. This season on NBC's "30 Rock," for instance, a Canadian character responded to a quip by saying, "I'm sorry, are you being sarcastic? Canadians have a hard time recognizing it 'cause we don't have a big Jewish population.")

Interestingly, when used on close friends, sarcasm can serve a more positive role. Julia Jorgensen of Eastern Illinois University found that criticism from close friends was perceived as less rude or unfair if it was couched it in sarcasm, instead of stated outright. They get the joke, which reaffirms the social bond and blunts the sting even as their friend is pointing out a shortcoming. Jorgensen calls this "the face-saving function of sarcastic irony." But again, that function would be undermined if the critic followed the remark by saying, "I'm being sarcastic." Those would be fighting words.

Better Solutions for the Sarcasm Immune

On a recent post on the Web site Democratic Underground, "raccoon" implored his fellow "DUers" to "please use sarcasm emoticon if you're being sarcastic. ... Even if you think what you're saying is SOOO obvious anyone would know it was sarcasm, for instance if you post, 'Cheney is really good at heart,' (by the way, that is), include the sarcasm emoticon!"

One can understand this desire to be fully understood. After all, the ethos of the Web dictates that everyone everywhere must be expressing themselves all the time, forever, so the mere possibility of being misunderstood by legions of people you don't know is a uniquely traumatic thing. But this is when a choice needs to be made, in this era of vast impersonal communication. Do you want to be understood, or do you want to be sarcastic? If the former, unless you can manage the high-wire act of written sarcasm, it's best to just make your case plainly. If the latter, rather than ruin your sarcastic sentiments by planting a flag in them, let them fly and allow them to function as intended. If they work, they work.

Here's a great example of high-grade sarcasm in action. The late English writer Kingsley Amis devised a brilliant gambit for knocking self-styled wine experts down a peg at parties. When the target in question begins to hold forth on the grape, Amis writes, "Shush everyone else and say, 'Listen chaps, here's a chance for us all to learn something. Carry on, Percy.' " The beauty of this sort of sarcasm is that you can use it on any topic, regardless of the status of the target. Sure, you could unleash it at a dinner party, but if you earnestly unloaded it on, say, a politician or a heckler at a town hall meeting, it would be equally devastating. Being great sarcasm, it's nearly impossible to respond to, so it works as a powerful leveler, especially during miserable days like these, which require great leveling.