Sarcasm is great. You hear it all the time, probably because it is pretty hilarious and so easy to use. Best of all, everyone always gets sarcasm. Okay, about that last part—I was actually being sarcastic! Confusing, right? Let me expand: sarcasm is great, but it can also be the actual worst. At best, you get a little laugh from your peers and a nice serotonin boost. At worst, you lose close friendships. Yeah, you heard me: friendships. ‘Cause here’s the thing about sarcasm: sometimes, if people don’t understand that you were being sarcastic, they will literally believe you said the EXACT OPPOSITE THING THAT YOU MEANT. Even more chilling is that there is a group of people out there who do not actually understand sarcasm, like, at all—and when you say you hate pie to make fun of someone who just asked you if you liked pie while you were eating a slice of pie, they’ll turn to you and go, “What the heck!!?? But you are literally eating a piece of pie right now!!”
So, yeah, that’s sort of the insidious and darkly horrendous side of sarcasm. If this doesn’t sound that bad to you, you probably just use sarcasm in a healthy, moderate way and understand social cues. If this is true, you can stop reading because you probably can’t relate to literally anything I’ve gone through my entire life.
Because, let’s be real—most of the time, sarcasm is really not that hard to understand. Many people know that when you say something like “thanks a lot,” you’re not actually thankful. Many people understand that when someone goes, “Surprise, surprise,” it is because something extremely unsurprising has happened.
Unfortunately, this is often not the way that I like to use sarcasm. The way I like to use sarcasm would be saying something like “I love capitalism!” while doing something that does not exactly signal that I do not, in fact, love capitalism, like ordering a dress off of Amazon. Not only that, but I will say this with such genuine enthusiasm that a man within earshot sporting a trucker hat will turn to me and add something about how capitalism breeds innovation.
Then, you say enough ambiguously sarcastic things and suddenly, it feels like no one understands you. Like you don’t even understand yourself. You go to pick out an outfit in the morning, and ask, Who am I? You send a GIF to the group chat and think, Why did I send that? Will they understand that the black turtleneck signifies a shift in the seasons of my life? Will my friends get that Hannah Montana giving a thumbs up is an earnest symbol of agreement, but also a sardonic nod to a long lost era of our childhood? You feel like an international student in a new country where you don’t speak the language, except English is literally your first language and you are in Ontario. You want to express yourself in a way that is original, but you are worried signals will get crossed. You worry to the point that, eventually, everything gets lost in translation. You begin changing your style every morning, dressing outrageously. You start quadruple texting.
This is called overthinking and, when it comes to sarcasm, I have found that overthinking is actually quite positive—useful, even. I only say this because most of the time, especially when it comes to sarcasm, I tend to underthink. And I’ve also learned that, as annoying as it is, saying “Just kidding!” every once in a while goes a long way. Take it from me—I’ve lost friendships because of this. FRIENDSHIPS.