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The Hunting of the Snark

  
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
16:55 / 08.05.06
"Just the place for a snark!"
The Bellman cried, as he landed his crew with care.
Supporting each man on the top of the tide
by a finger entwined in his hair.

Elsewhere, Flyboy commented, on the creation of "low-snark" threads:

It's not about wanting "high-snark", obviously. It's more about not accepting that there is a thing called snark that we all know when we see, or that it is possible or even useful to keep what might be called snark out of threads.

In one of those threads itself, Sibyline was advised:

Sib, PC probably isn't a term you should be using on Barbelith, it tends to bring out the snark.

When I pointed out that discussions of the word "PC" were not, in my opinion, ascribable to snark, my point was taken, which was a very low-snark response, of course. However, it has gotten me thinking.

Snark is used around here as a kind of convenient shorthand for something like "attitude of disdain or sarcastic rejoinder (with the implication of being a disproportionate response to stimuli) (with the implication of damaging the snarker's point)". It's an inexact term. It has, for me, elements of the discomfort one often gets with ostensibly gender-neutral terms which appear to map precisely onto gender-referential terms - in this case, "bitch". Etymologically, it could be seen as a shortening of "snide remark", or a portmanteau of snide, snapppish, sarcastic... pick your own snarkberries, really.

I'm interested to think about how we use the term, and how it, as a neologism, fits into other usages. The only time I have regularly encountered it outside message boards is in the slogan of Television Without Pity - "Spare the Snark, spoil the networks". Here, snark is being used to describe a form of criticism with ultimately constructive results- the networks learn from it how to make better television programmes. It does not appear to have the same meaning when used on Barbelith however, but what it's actual meaning _is_ is hard to pin down; rather like "PC", in fact. For example, if someoone calls me a "catty little bitch-boy", I know what they are doing - feminise/belittle/feminise/belittle, essentially. Snark is harder to pin down.

So, questions:

1) What do you understand by the idea of snark, snarking?
2) What do you seek to do by describing your own behaviour or the behaviour of others as "snarking" or "snarky"?
3) How would you see a "low-snark" environment functioning? How would it differ from an environment in which snark was not regulated?
4) Everything else.
 
 
Disco is My Class War
17:20 / 08.05.06
Given the speedy devolution of the Hetero 101 thread, what Flyboy said.

I sort of like snark. I like snark's slimmer cousin sarky better though. That's the cousin who always turns up at your door, unannounced, with a bottle of whiskey, so at least if he insults you, he can do it while you're both drunk.
 
 
*
17:24 / 08.05.06
Okay, so say someone accuses me of being "too PC."

A response like "Actually, politically correct is a term coined by social conservatives to prevent people who have objections to their behavior from being able to speak out about them. It's silencing, and I don't appreciate its use. There are several threads about this. Please don't label my behavior that way." is a perfectly non-snarky response.

A snarky alternative might be "Oooh, look who's come to pay us a visit, it's Mister Blair! Sooo sorry to have restricted your freedom of speech by exercising my own. I'll just go back to Guantanamo now, where your good friend Mister Bush has paid for my permanent island vacation." or any number of other things.

The motivating factor for a snarky response is anger resulting in a desire to make the other person look bad, while oneself appearing witty. Its primary motivation is not to encourage learning or growth, and while it may do this eventually, this is not its most direct result. Its most direct result is more anger. When it does function to teach, it only does so as a result of this being applied many times as a negative reinforcement. It's a push mode of teaching in that you start from the thinking you don't want, and push the person any direction so long as it's away from that. The results are unpredictable.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
17:30 / 08.05.06
Hmmm.. and if the first response is described as "snarky"? There's no reason why it wouldn't be or couldn't be, is there? Possibly also passive-aggressive, of course, but nonetheless.

MD: I like "sarky" a lot as well. I love that sarkasmos is the act of tearing flesh from bones.
 
 
*
17:34 / 08.05.06
Do you, Haus, agree with the distinction I've proposed?
 
 
All Acting Regiment
17:40 / 08.05.06
I see snarkiness as being agressive, usually righteously, where one could have been softer and gently picked someone up on something.
 
 
Disco is My Class War
17:44 / 08.05.06
See, sometimes I like bare bones with no flesh on them.
 
 
Spyder Todd 2008
17:45 / 08.05.06
1) What do you understand by the idea of snark, snarking?

I understand it as being a snide comment, (un)intentionally made to aggravate a situation or to take the piss. Also, lashing out- unintentional or not- can be seen as being snarky, though I’m not sure it really should be. Lashing out to me should be seen as lashing out, whether you meant it doesn’t stop it from lashing out. Although my opinion may be in the minority.

2) What do you seek to do by describing your own behaviour or the behaviour of others as "snarking" or "snarky"?

I don’t, honestly. I’m not overly fond of the word, and since it is rather ill-defined in meaning right now, I just don’t use the term.

3) How would you see a "low-snark" environment functioning? How would it differ from an environment in which snark was not regulated?

This one I’m not so sure on. Maybe I’ll come back to it once I figure out how to say what I mean.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
17:51 / 08.05.06
Hmm. No, I don't think I do, I'm afraid, id. First up, because I don't think your second response would happen, or rather I do not think your second response would happen unless perhaps as a response to the first response. Further, it is simple sarcasm - I don't see how it reclassifies.

Second up, I think it would be perfectly possible to describe the first response as "snarky". As Legba Rex has just said, the snark/not snark barrier is highly subjective - I might draw a roughly inverse relationship between one's readiness to be challenged and one's readiness to identify snark. In those terms, "snark" serves as a get-out-of-jail card, an opportunity to withdraw from a discussion for reasons hominis. What is soft? What is gentle?

Third up, I don't think it's necessarily simple to parse out emotions or indeed desires. One can certainly perceive a motivation as anger, but can one confidently identify a motivating emotion or a motivating aim? I think it's often difficult for either speaker, recipient, third party or any combination to get a matching and accurate picture of the emotions and motivations in play.

Hmm... so, do I disagree with your definition? Actually, I think I spoke too hastily. What I think I must mean is "That is certainly a way to define the word 'snark', and it might accurately describe what some people are saying is happening when they identify "snark" or describe a statement or action as "snarky", but I'm not sure it is a useful descriptor, as it wraps up a potentially complex set off processes into a small and I would say rather dismissive word.
 
 
Loomis
18:07 / 08.05.06
I move that this thread be retitled:

Snark 101
The low-snark thread for well-intentioned questions and musings about snark, snideness and sarcasm.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
18:08 / 08.05.06
Believe me, I was tempted.
 
 
*
18:18 / 08.05.06
Okay, I see. I tend to employ the notion of snark more as an understanding of my own behavior than understanding the behavior of others, I think, so I thought in terms of my own motivations when I'm behaving in a way that feels "snarky." (And the term seems right because when I feel that way, I think my facial expression is similar to when I say the word "snark," so it's a sort of visual/kinesthetic onomatopoeia for me.)

I would like it if people used this thread to come up with a way of making decisions about when their own behavior is snarky. I can find it in me to trust many of the people on this board to be honest about when they're being snarky and when they aren't, and in a thread which people have requested remain low-snark, to make an effort to honor that request. If someone is hurt by something they perceive as snarky they should say that.

As far as my second response being unrealistic—well, I'm not very good at this, actually. And while it is perfectly possible to describe the first response as snarky, I'd like some help figuring out what, besides those motivations only I can know about, should serve as a clue that it is not snarky. Because I strongly feel that there is something about the first response that the second response lacks and vice versa which makes a huge difference in how I would perceive these comments if I were receiving them from others.
 
 
ibis the being
20:24 / 08.05.06
My understanding of the word "snark" is that it means pointed sarcasm, usually with a dismissive tone (or undertone). That said, I don't believe I've ever personally used the word before so it's a bit funny for me to have to define it.

I think snarkiness has a role in conversation and certainly in critique (the latter being a large part of TWOP, which by the way I love), but I think also it's wise to cordon off certain topics as low-snark zones, though they may be far and few between. I understand Ganesh's intention in designating "Homo 101" as "low snark" was to create a kind of safe zone where even stupid questions would not be ridiculed, even though they might rightly be. Sexuality, in general, can be a subject fraught with shame, embarrassment, judgement, confusion, and ignorance. Not every topic under the sun needs to be snark-free but I thought it was appropriate in that case.
 
 
Kiltartan Cross
20:56 / 08.05.06
MD: I like "sarky" a lot as well. I love that sarkasmos is the act of tearing flesh from bones.
And it has an even cooler cousin - the sarcophagus, the flesh-eating limestone coffin.
Although I'd've thought that someone turning up drunk was more likely to be sake...

I was interested to meet the snarks of Barbelith, and spent some considerable time trying to work out what and where they were, and where the boo- might fit into things. Are there any? Are they a nastier cousin of the snark, something so intrinsically terrible that meeting one would surely cause the unwary reader to disappear forever from the board? Are they OUT THERE?
 
 
Ganesh
21:23 / 08.05.06
Okay, I'm interested in how people respond to this thread because "snark" has, as Haus says, become Barbelith shorthand for a certain style/mood of posting. IdEntity's thoughts on snark are almost spookily close to my own: prior to his last post here, I was on the verge of posting something myself about how I tend to use the term as a self-descriptor, usually apologetically, more than I apply it to other people. I do apply it to other people, though, and it's worth attempting to pin it down, generally and for the purposes of providing a practical rule-of-thumb for posting in the various low-snark 101 threads.

Elsewhere, Flyboy asked me to define "snark", and here's my first stab(s) at it:

'Angry challenge', I suppose. irritable antagonism. Facetiousness. Snippiness. Rounding on someone.

It's probably one of those things, like misogyny or homophobia, that would be very hard to define in a universally agreed way - and hopefully we wouldn't actually need a concrete definition to which everyone would subscribe. I'd settle for having spaces wherein individual posters did their best to be patient, to give the benefit of the doubt, to withold anger, to seek commonality as well as disagreement, to avoid Us & Them polarising.

...

Perhaps a willingness to back down or self-examine when labelled 'snarky'? I dunno. As I say, I'd settle for a few threads in which people actively try to be less antagonistic than they might otherwise be in terms of their posting style.

To this, I'd add name-calling - saying things like "only a fool/simpleton/fuckwit would say something like that" - which can personalise/close down a discussion very quickly.

I still think these are key principles for low-snark threads - although I fully accept their subjective nature. Please note that I'm not remotely suggesting that this should be the dominant style of posting across Barbelith, merely that it may be of particular use in the sort of threads I'd hoped Homo 101 would exemplify. Not everyone is comfortable with - or good at - the impassioned, witty, put-down-heavy style of many Barbelith debates, and I know for a fact that many are intimidated by such a milieu. My intention with the low-snark stuff was to provide a setting in which those most curious/in need of information felt emboldened to ask for that information.
 
 
alas
21:25 / 08.05.06
In the other thread, Nina/Anna d. said--I paraphrase--that avoiding snark essentially means dealing with things directly rather than flippantly. That works for me as a basic starting point. And while I think we're never going to arrive at a quantifiable snarkiness rubric, id's examples do work for me, as does his point that it's more about paying attention to one's own responses than seeking to regulate others.

Personally, when I'm actively controlling my sarcasm/flippancy/anger response, I try to give the other person the benefit of the doubt: perhaps against long odds I will write from the assumption that this is someone who is genuinely ignorant and willing to learn rather than that they are just taking the piss--or trying to piss me off. Lack of snark is not exactly quantifiable in ways that people seem to be demanding, but more a matter of a basic generosity in one's approach to another.
 
 
Ganesh
21:30 / 08.05.06
Lack of snark is not exactly quantifiable in ways that people seem to be demanding, but more a matter of a basic generosity in one's approach to another.

Yes - and, as such, is obviously open to abuse. I don't think the possibility that one's generosity might be abused is itself an argument against the idea of low-snark discussions, though.
 
 
sibyline, beating Qalyn to a Q
22:19 / 08.05.06
for me, something is also more likely to be snarky if the poster implies something personal about the object of the snark. as someone who is generally opinionated and argumentative about non-personal topics, but tries to generally think that people are nice and have good intentions at a personal level, this is an important distinction.

i've been actively avoiding getting into arguments here recently just because i've found that my intentions are being misinterpreted, probably in light of my scant posting history. i don't care when people disagree with me, but when disagreement comes with implications of arrogance, boastfulness, triviality, etc., i do get emotionally affected even though i know i shouldn't.

and if you do disagree with this point, please be nice about it. because i do really do hate snark.
 
 
Mourne Kransky
22:27 / 08.05.06
I had two kinds of teacher at school. There was the screaming, blackboard-duster-hurling, High Snark geography teacher who ranted at us when we didn't give the correct answer. Not stable but friendsreunited.com is full of ex pupils (usually boys) singing his praises.

Then there was the history teacher. Low Snark. If you asked why Paris was worth a Mass, he didn't rant at you about your ignorance and general uselessness. He explained why Henry IV and his change of religion mattered then and years thereafter.

So I studied two years of history at University and gave up Geography after second year at High School. Still study history, just for the fun of it. Low Snark is effective.

However, I still like a good snark. It's very satisfying emotionally but it's not as effective at seeding attitudinal change as plain information sharing. So I think Low Snark's a commendable and useful aim for these recent 101 threads.

Very few of us spring fully formed from the head of Zeus, like the Goddess of Wisdom. Most of us workaday Lithers are just works in progress along the path to enlightenment.
 
 
sleazenation
22:32 / 08.05.06
I guess that means that some other furious, high-snark lithers sprang from the severed testicles of some other titan...
 
 
Ganesh
10:53 / 09.05.06
That was Aphrodite, wasn't it? Not known for her snark...
 
 
Spyder Todd 2008
14:58 / 09.05.06
Athena, actually. Though Aphrodite had an unusual birth as well. (She was spawned from Uranus' genitals after they were cut off and thrown into the sea. I have no idea how that worked, but whatever.)
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
14:59 / 09.05.06
Spyder: You may want to look at the post directly above Ganesh's.
 
 
Spyder Todd 2008
15:22 / 09.05.06
I may indeed. Oy.
 
 
Quantum
17:18 / 09.05.06
In My Mind snarky is the correption of Sarky and Narky, the sarcasm that occurs when a poster is provoked to irritation or anger by the snark-ee. I had unconsciously never questioned it could be anything else, and that works for me.

My mental image is now of a surreal creature with little patience and a biting wit. Like the dude's hat from Labyrinth.
 
 
Ticker
19:41 / 05.06.06
I look to the exchange of views with other people online as a great learning tool. Problem is that the medium of the internet rounds off the subtle tones of voice and gesture. If an effort is not made to convey respect for the speaker even when the view expressed is being disagreed with, productive exchange tends to cease.

I've only been on here for a short time but the wealth of viewpoints and human experience is a badass resource. Sadly when the person offering a critical perspective does not use the medium with its flaws in mind, some of the information falls off.

I can think of a few exchanges with obviously well informed thoughtful people on here that made me feel as if I was participating in a truly useful dialogue. They caused me to revisit my ideas and challenged my assumptions. It kicked ass.

However some exchanges made me feel as if the person did not value my particpation or my experience and caused me to wonder why they were even engaging me at all.

Add to that a layer of sarcasm and I become unable to really believe the person is invested in listening to my viewpoints, but rather has reached a conclusion about my perspective without verifying it as correct.

We are burdened with the obligation to use our selected language thoughtfully with others in this medium and to extend the benefit of the doubt that either side of the dialogue is not properly expressing themselves.

Once we have an established mutual respect then we can play, once the lines of communication have been marked, then we can snark.
 
 
Keith, like a scientist
19:53 / 05.06.06
I've always identified snark on the net with a "superior dismissal of someone's point in the form of sarcasm." To me, the key is the "superior" part...it just seems that the poster is saying "I am smarter than you and am demonstrating that by making your point seem silly."

Snark tends to work IRL among people that know each other well. I give the snark and take the snark on a daily basis with at least one of my better friends, and it's understood to be in the spirit of brotherly familiarity.

On teh innanet, in forums, where fairly serious and passionate discussion takes place between strangers, and without the benefit of body language, this kind of thing ends up sounding overly harsh as straight words on the page.

I'd certainly like to see less of it on Barbelith.
 
 
grant
19:10 / 06.06.06
I first encountered the word "snarky" in a Dave Barry column in Tropic magazine(*). He was using it as a self-descriptor, as the kind of goofy humorist who refuses to respect boundaries without ever taking them seriously enough to out-and-out protest them.

It's mentioned here in a Booklist blurb in reference to columns by Barry's buddy Carl Hiaasen, comparing him to Mark Twain. That triangulates my sense of the term pretty thoroughly, I think.

According to the Random House Word Mavens, the use of the word dates back to 1906 at least, and is a primarily British expression related to snorts of derision, or snide remarks.

(*) Tropic magazine was the Miami Herald Sunday supplement from sometime in the late60s/early 70s until the end of the 90s -- Dave Barry, Gene Weingarten, Joel Achenbach and the rest of the gang there were all like heroes to me in the 1980s. I'm pretty sure I noticed "snarky" there before 1990, but couldn't absolutely swear to it.
 
 
Ticker
19:33 / 06.06.06
On teh innanet, in forums, where fairly serious and passionate discussion takes place between strangers, and without the benefit of body language, this kind of thing ends up sounding overly harsh as straight words on the page.

..and without the benefit of knowing the other person tends to inform your sense of them rather badly.

I've run into a few posts where I've deployed the de-snarking goggles inorder to pull the really great stuff out of what could be just an arrogant nasty put down.
While it works, it does get tiring and you wish the other person would just not be so harsh. Or if they would at least let you know why they view you as deserving of the put down if it is intended.
 
 
SteppersFan
13:21 / 08.06.06
I had thought that snark might be a good descriptor of that phenomenon where a poster makes some less than perfectly comprehensible point, or makes a minor infringement of forum ettiquette, and the corrective forum response is both several times as long as the original, and several orders of magnitude greater in terms of invective, amounting to a significant level of threadrot and off-topic-ness (if that's a word, and I'm not sure it is). Hence, to snark evokes the image of breaking a butterfly upon a wheel.

Of course, it never happens on Barbelith.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
13:38 / 08.06.06
Whereas I increasingly see it as the process whereby unsupported allegations are made about behaviour on an online forum, any attempts to secure clarification, explanation or foundation of which will prove to be comparable to the removal of healthy teeth from the mouth of an unwilling and PCP-crazed owner using only liquorice bootlaces. It seems that we all have our own personal snarks...
 
  
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