republic of snark

The title of this post is also the title of the first chapter of David Denby’s new book Snark: It’s mean, It’s personal, and It’s Ruining Our Conversation.

Here are a couple excerpts from the first chapter:

This is an essay about a strain of nasty, knowing abuse spreading like pinkeye through the national conversation — a tone of snarking insult provoked and encouraged by the new hybrid world of print, television, radio, and the Internet. It’s an essay about style and also, I suppose, grace. Anyone who speaks of grace — so spiritual a word — in connection with our raucous culture risks sounding like a genteel idiot, so I had better say right away that I’m all in favor of nasty comedy, incessant profanity, trash talk, any kind of satire, and certain kinds of invective. It’s the bad kind of invective — low, teasing, snide, condescending, knowing; in brief, snark — that I hate. …

Snark attacks individuals, not groups, though it may appeal to a group mentality, depositing a little bit more toxin into already poisoned waters. Snark is a teasing, rug-pulling form of insult that attempts to steal someone’s mojo, erase her cool, annihilate her effectiveness, and it appeals to a knowing audience that shares the contempt of the snarker and therefore understands whatever references he makes. It’s all jeer and josh, a form of bullying that, except at its highest levels, beggars the soul of humor. …

Of course, snark is just words, and if you look at it one piece at a time, it seems of piddling importance. But it’s annoying as hell, the most dreadful style going, and ultimately debilitating. A future America in which too many people sound mean and silly, like small yapping dogs tied to a post; in which we insult one another merrily in a kind of endless zany brouhaha; in which the lowest, most insinuating and insulting side threatens to win national political campaigns — this America will leave everyone, including the snarkers, in a foul mood once the laughs die out. …

It turns out that in the wake of the Internet revolution, snark as a style has outgrown its original limited function. The Internet has allowed it to metastasize as a pop writing form: A snarky insult, embedded in a story or a post, quickly gets traffic; it gets linked to other blogs; and soon it has spread like a sneezy cold through the vast kindergarten of the Web. Not only that, it’s there forever, since it’s easily Googled out of obscurity. Along with all the useful, solid, clever, playful information and opinion circulating around, a style of creepy nastiness is rampaging all over the place, too. The zombies are biting, and a hell of a lot of us are enjoying the spectacle. The Internet did not invent sarcasm, or the porous back fence where our gossiping parents gathered, or the tenderly merciful tabloids; but it provides universal distribution of what had earlier reached a limited number of eyes and ears. In brief, the knowing group has been enlarged to an enormous audience that enjoys cruelty as a blood sport.

There’s an excellent 30 minute talk by David Denby that’s available on CSPAN’s Book TV website – you can view it here.

Much of what passes for journalism on the web can be said to make use of the element of snark as its backbone, with print antecedents in the alternative weekly publications of all stripes.

What a sad state of affairs.