My Dear Hard Drive

Posts Tagged ‘humor’

Sarcasm is a type of humour that can be used to insult or ridicule a person or an institution who is present or absent in the situation. Directly spoken to the object of insult, sarcasm is rather lowly rated form of “humour” ie. “I don’t appreciate your sarcasm”, but used properly, it can be hilarious. Many stand up comedians use sarcasm to a great success.

In a normal situation, sarcasm is a phrase that the person saying assumes nobody in their right mind would take it seriously. Some nationalities use different tone of voice (Americans) to emphasis that they are using sarcasm, some don’t, like the British, who can say pretty much anything with a straight face. Not emphasising sarcasm can be dangerous, as it can be taken seriously, as states this story about two mothers who were appalled by being told by an UK bus driver to stop having kids. I wasn’t present of course, but I would imagine that what the bus driver intended to say is: “The company policy is crap for mums, and if you want to have easy time using buses, you’re better off not having children with you.” Instead he opted out saying: “I’d stop having kids if I were you.” probably not expecting anyone to take him seriously enough to be offended by his remark.

When the person who hears the sarcasm has a different experience base to the one doing the joking, she or he can interpret sarcasm as a serious sentence, especially when no tone of voice emphasis is applied. In the case of the mommies, they have probably heard or read about childfree people who are dead serious when they say people should THINK before they have children. Maybe they’ve even run onto someone who seriously hated children.

Sometimes, people have such a low opinion of other people, that they’ll believe people can say absolutely anything and mean it. While most of us would instantly interpret “Sure I like children, I have them grilled and eat them with a lot of gravy” as a sarcastic comment, some would actually take it seriously and think you really do eat children. Sarcasm is handled in the right parahippocampal gyrus of the brain, and brain damage to this area will result into hardship in understanding sarcasm. Also dementia and autism can cause troubles understanding sarcasm. The good news is, that the sarcastic people can use this when insulting someone who didn’t get their first joke: “Do you have damaged brain or what?” but if the listener actually has a brain damage, they might just respond: “Yes, I do, how did you know?”

Sarcasm is often lost in inter-cultural speech as well, when the other party has low English skills or doesn’t understand the culture where the other party is coming from. Sarcasm is pretty useless between a Finn and an Indian for example, as neither one has much of a clue about the other one’s culture, so much that eating children might actually be a possibility for all they know. Some languages have “sarcasm marks” that are used similarly to the question mark and exclamation mark, and naturally them lacking in the English language will make it difficult for these people to get sarcasm in the written English language.

The next time you feel like saying: “you didn’t just say that?!” try “was that intended sarcastic?” instead before getting utterly insulted.

Do you know why people won’t “just drop in” even though you told them to a million times?

That answer your question?

(Obviously I’m no cartoonist, but I just had this image in my head and had to share it with you. :p)

I am not completely sure what would be the most accurate word or term to use for the Finnish word “vittuilla”, which is a perfect word. Taking the piss, yanking your chain, give you hard time, fuck with you (non-literally), give a good roast or something else. It’s the type of humour that tests the boundaries of friendship, is on the edge of insult but is always good willed… Unless it goes wrong, which happened over and over with a member of a Barbie collectors forum that I run.

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