Member-only story
Sarcasm Is Not a Language
Please stop saying you’re fluent in it.
I don’t know when sarcasm started being worn as some kind of badge of honor. Literally. There are shirts you can buy announcing your sarcastic nature to the world. It became an aspiration. A point of pride. A quality we should all appreciate in someone. It’s none of these things. It’s a warning label.
Sarcasm is a means of saying what you actually feel while hiding it behind a thin veil of humor as to rid yourself of accountability for how bad you make someone feel as a result of your words.
The proof of this is how many times sarcastic people have to explain the fact that they were being sarcastic. A snide comment comes flying out of their mouth and then there is the reaction. The horrified reaction that the recipient of the ill humored comment is offended or hurt. Telling that person, “I’m just kidding,” or “I was being sarcastic,” doesn’t soften the blow. It just means you can’t to own up the fact that you said something you probably shouldn’t have.
When I was online dating, I came across countless profiles of men who bragged that they “spoke fluent sarcasm.” Those guys went right into the circular file. It’s not a language. It…
