Sarcasm is often used by many people to make light of the situation. Sometimes when it’s in your face kind of a ridiculous lie it’s easy to discern but sometimes it’s pretty subtle and can be hard to get. Whether it’s the former or the latter, it’s a good escape route. If the other person doesn’t follow through, you come across as the funny sarcastic person and if the other person follows through, well then you get to turn back and go: “Sorry I was just kidding.” So it’s a great way to present certain thoughts or facts when you are uncertain of the way it will be perceived because there is an inherent built in escape route.
However sarcasm doesn’t always work with simple minded or non-poker face people because their mind is just wired differently. Their first thought is to blindly believe what the other person is saying. It can take months or years to sometimes realize and when you do happen to arrive at that conclusion, then you just happen to question everything they say. Every time that person talks, you can feel the decision flowchart occurring in your brain while your mind rushes to play chess and complete this flowchart to arrive at the perfect answer. So your face always looks like this when you talk to this person:
And the other person is thinking is she even paying attention why can’t she understand what I am saying. And then what if the perfect answer that you arrived at after playing all permutations of mind chess isn’t what they were expecting and they think you are trying to be over smart or sassy or rude and then they try to outsmart you by trying to play on another level. Do you know what that results in? Never-ending frustrating game of catch up.
Instead won’t it be better if all important communications were done without the multi-layer sarcasm? I mean imagine if the President conducted his press communications this way and the news media people, journalists and the entire country were continuously trying to guess what he may have meant by that? What would that be like? Pretty entertaining, yes, but would it be effective? Would it be productive? But in this day and age, to capture your audience a.k.a your country’s attention you have to be somewhat entertaining. So, Mr. President I guess we can excuse you for the disinfectant comment! But you know what they say: There is a time and place for everything!
While writing this piece, I came across this other interesting article on Sarcasm: THE SCIENCE OF SARCASM: YEAH RIGHT
Courtesy: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-science-of-sarcasm-yeah-right-25038/
This article talks about how sarcasm is ingrained in this society right from childhood. While reading this article, I realized why I have been feeling brain fatigued. It’s because my brain has been working extra hard trying to understand some people. I guess next time I meet new people I should go: “Hi, I am Katelyn and I don’t get sarcasm.”
Sincerely,
Katelyn
