Everything is awful : snark as ritualized social practice in online discourse

This thesis explores a mode of collective meaning making at the intersection of humor, insult, and jest that increasingly occupies social media conversations, online comment sections, and Internet writing far and wide: for lack of a better word, snark. Though akin to the similarly maligned practices of irony and sarcasm, snark is more unwieldy and less refined. To accuse others of snark is to question their intentions, their sincerity, even the validity of their claims. Snark is often seen as destructive. Per the subtitle of critic David Denby's book on the matter, "it's mean, it's personal, and it's ruining our conversations."' In the following pages, I investigate the role of snark in online discourse and attempt to salvage it from its bad reputation. I define and historicize snark as a humor- and insult-based social practice rooted in oral rather than written traditions. I argue that snark can adopt a pro-social role in online environments whose architecture tends to reward vapid or deceptive content (which, per former Gawker writer Tom Scocca, I call smarm and situate within Harry Frankfurt's concept of bullshit). After a discussion of the differences between politeness and civility, I define pro-social snark as impolite yet civil. Lastly, I analyze snark's affective qualities, and specifically its close relationship with paranoia. Utilizing Eve Sedgwick's notions of paranoid and reparative reading, I advocate for a reparative practice of snark that gives back to the culture it ridicules.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Program in Comparative Media Studies/Writing

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2017

Author dc:creator

• Tsiveriotis, George

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Heather Hendershot.

• Humanities.
• Comparative Media Studies.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/111293

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/111293