Oh, you snarky developers!

blog.logicalrand.com

7 points·cte··6 comments

But Chris, you left us hanging at the end your your blog entry. What was your reply? It was snarky, right?

Haha :) I ended up writing the blog entry, and by the time I was done, my snarky inspiration had somehow transformed into something resembling diplomacy.

I enjoyed that article, and its important to note that "snark" has a long and generally successful history. They used to call it "wit" and many writers built a career around it. In the workplace, wit is often a way to rail against pointless mind-numbing hierarchies without actually assaulting anyone ;-)

snark ≠ wit

snark includes a snide/smug element; wit rarely does

Well, rarely ≠ never, but I just thought I'd go look for some examples - decided Oscar Wilde quotes would be a good place to start

A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her.

A true friend stabs you in the front.

All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.

Ambition is the last refuge of the failure.

Just as examples. Admittedly I'm cherry-picking, but I'm 100% convinced that smugness or a sense of self-superiority is integral to "wit."

Whether any of those quotes are snide depends on the context: especially whether they were directed against someone in particular.

Further: wit is often self-deprecating (and some of those Wildisms may have been offered in that spirit), while snark hardly ever is.

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