Fresh Sarcasm Made All Day

I have a couple of people who I send “good morning” texts to sometimes. As I was sending one of those today, I added a description of how I was meaning to say it. I find myself doing that a lot. When I write my blog posts, I often italicize so you can easily hear how I meant to sound when I wrote it. Texting and Facebook give you no such option. Oh sure, you can add emoji sometimes, but it always doesn't do as much to emphasize or clarify.

For example, if you write, “I had another lousy day”, that's pretty straightforward. If you write “What a great day”, that could go either way. You could be being sarcastic, or sincere. Of course, I always assume sarcasm because it's my native tongue, but there are those (gasp!) who don't use sarcasm as readily as I do. “What a great day” with a smiley face would seem to indicate sincerity. “What a great day” with a tongue sticking out would seem to show sarcasm.

When I send a text that's maybe earlier than usual, I'll usually do all lower case letters, and add “i'm whispering, hoping not to wake you”. I'm not sure why, I mean unless the recipient has their sound off, the tone they hear will be the same whether I intend to whisper or not. Probably because I'm goofy like that.

When I do a Facebook post about something good that happens, I always make it very clear that I'm being sincere. I may even write that I intend to be sincere, not sarcastic. Maybe that's a sign that I'm a little too sarcastic (is there such a thing?), but I've been honing my sarcasm for many years, and I have no intention of easing up now.

Is there a point to today's blog? Hmm, good question. What do you think the point is? Maybe the point is that it's easy to be misunderstood via text, more so than in person or even by phone. Interpretation depends so much on the reader's mood. What may be a perfectly innocent statement might be taken to be snarky if someone is tired or already cranky. If the person can hear you, they might more easily understand you meant no offense. Maybe.

When you're as fluent in sarcasm as I am, you are often misunderstood, so you spend a lot of time explaining yourself. You'd think that would be an incentive to back off on the sarcasm, right? Maybe a normal person would, but, do you remember the name of my blog? :)