Dialect

Don't get me wrong, love is my first language.  I subscribe to a religion that consists of

 To Kill a Mockingbird, paddleboats, cheesecake and fresh dill (no, not all at the same time, you Snark, you!).  I think most Snarks are very nice people, I know I am ; )…buuuuut life is ridiculous, so it doesn’t take long to realize you gotta roll your eyes a little to survive.  

The best Snarks start young:

 

and if you’re lucky, your parents encouraged you by snorting when you said Snark stuff in church. 

[Musical break!!!  Sung to “As I Search the Holy Scriptures” with apologies to all LDSers everywhere:

As I search the Holy Scriptures

Loving Father of mankind

May my mom please buy Doritos

And may they be Cool Ranch kind!

For the record, I’m sure it would have been Snarky Latin if I’d been Catholic, etc.]

Math is not the universal language.  No one was ever trying to decide if they should launch the nukes and had a quadratic equation break the tension.  “We all started reciting prime numbers and then everything was okay”??  No.  Snark, that’s the one that crosses political and cultural lines and pours lemon juice in your papercuts.

I do not think Snarkiness has to be mean, but I have to make up a definition I’m happy with before I can say what it does mean.  I do, however, know there are two dialects of Snark: Pragmatic and Asshole.  Asshole is easy to recognize by the small muscle spasms that will begin immediately upon hearing it, alternately advising you to punch the speaker, or run away, preferably with the speaker’s smartphone or romantic partner.  The Pragmatic dialect closely resembles an internal version of Xhosa, that South African Dutch clicky language.  Internal, because if you speak Pragmatic Snark, that’s where you hear the clicking, which is actually your filter editing what you say before it comes out of your mouth.  Like the real-time bleepers -want that job- on the Oscars (hint: if you pronounce the f-bomb like the Irish, you can usually get away with it several times before the censors can catch up with you : ).  Outsiders will simply hear bizarre pauses as your brain searches furiously for the next non- or only mildly offensive word in the tickertape of your stream of consciousness.

Click!