What do the Gedolim say about snark, irony and sarcasm?
Chaim: “Good question! Is there any of this in Torah? If not, then Yidden don’t need it.”
If Yidden can make a parnassah from snark, then it’s a mitzvah.
Our college chaplain used to preach often against sarcasm. This always baffled me, and made me assume that the poor fellow, though clearly holy, was a little bit clueless. After all, a stroll through the nearby woods would show him that the students in his care were engaging in much worse sins than a little snarkiness!
Now I think two things: (a) of course he knew what was going on in the woods; and (b) he was onto something. Sarcasm is the younger, rather juvenile sister of irony. Irony is wonderful as a literary vehicle — but as a lifestyle, it’s deadly. A habitually ironic point of view trains us to see the world at a distance, to never approach our consciences directly.
A habit of irony creeps up on us. Take, for instance, the guy who watches a comedy TV show that ironically features scantily-clad young women parading around. This recurring feature is a big joke: the audience would never actually watch a show which was so gauche as to actually feature scantily-clad young women parading around! That’s for rednecks! This show, however, is poking fun at that kind of show; it’s a send-up, a spoof, a clever commentary on the kind of yahoos who will sit and watch that kind of thing. And a sophisticated guy will show how above it he is, by sitting and watching that kind of thing — wearing, he imagines, an armor made of irony.
