Snark at its best is not just pointless unfunny sarcasm aimed at an incredibly easy target.
It's not being rude for the sake of being rude, and should you offend someone "It's snark week" is not a defense. Nobody likes a Mean Girl, even on snark week.
For me, good snark is taking something that sucks, really sucks, and making it into something funny, something better. Sometimes, that's the only thing that makes it bearable.
Though anybody can whine, complain or make fun of someone, real snark to me isn't something you can just start doing on command, it's usually brought on by a thinly veiled sense of outrage. That's why I think the early UU Christian blogs did it better, because in some real sense they felt oppressed.
Just sayin'
CC
4 comments:
Does this refer to a particular posting? Just curious.
I'm a little confused by why "an incredibly easy target" is bad, but "something that sucks, really sucks" is a good target. Is A only an "incredibly easy target" if most of the population acknowledges that A sucks? (So, for example, spam or Al Qaeda is an incredibly easy target and thus unworthy of snarking about.) This in contrast to something that a much smaller fraction of the population acknowledges as sucking (e.g., homosexual couples' inability in some states to adopt, or what excessive union power has done to American industry), which is snark-worthy.
You just cracked me up with your reference to "early Christian UU blogs," because now I feel like I'm part of an obscure movement that some future Elaine Pagels will write about.
If there's a planet left in the future, I mean.
I feel the same way about snark-on-command, btw.
I would like to think that I have contibuted my fair share of highly justified snark in response to U*U oppression of various kinds.
A good number of my picket sign slogans, and writing on the sidewalk. . . would seem to fit your criteria for snark CC.
My UNSAFE SECT? picket sign slogan has to be amongst the most succinct snark that U*Us are ever likely to see and French speaking people certainly "get" the "snarque" in my picket sign slogan that says -
UNE "EGLISE" QUI N'EST PAS TRES CATHOLIQUE
Must get around to displaying -
"CHURCH" OF THE INHUMAN "HUMANISTS"
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