The Hunting Of the Snark
Props to Sarah Rees Brennan for making me think about this: theblackarts.com/sarahreesbrennan.com/personal-blog-2/
Snark. Its everywhere. We love it. It's more fun than a monkey on a space hopper.
Sarcastic mockery is a religion in some regions of the net. It's more popular than Barack Obama. Its more popular than* hope* dude. Righteous Anger and Snark probably account for 60% of all the links and recs I get. Not even cute animals can compete with that.
Everyone's doing it. In places like Fandom Wank and innumerable query blogs and review sites, people gather around the glowing laptops to show the stupid, the inept and the plain misguided the error of their hilarious ways.
I do it too. There's little I find more satisfying that preparing my most cutting, crowd-pleasing barbs, cracking my knuckles, and preparing to type.
Except... and maybe this is just me. But does anyone else, in the moment before they hit 'post', feel like a tiny bit of a shitweasel?
As we gather around to point and laugh, Muntz-like, at the internet's bounty of stupid and crazy, is it just me the feels like a RAGING BULLYING ASSHOLE? I mean, just a little?
Obviously, it depends on the target. I will happily rip into Glen Beck, Nadine Dorries and Paul Stanes until the sun gutters out. Partly because they are genuinely malignant, misinforming, fear-and-hate mongering pricks, partly because they are inveterate shit-slingers themselves and ought to be able to take it, but mostly because they are old enough and ugly enough to look after themselves.
But you can't say that about the the fan-ficcer who's posted their first effort at Jacob/Voldemort Slash. Or the novelist who's just published their small press debut.
"But," I hear the internetz cry, "our Snark is a service to these poor miscreants! If we do not mock them, then how will they learn?"
This argument, excuse me for saying so, is a steaming pile of horseshit. You do not mock them so they improve. People improve by writing badly, then a little less badly, then a little less badly some more, and continuing to do so for a geological age. If you rip their guts out in public, they will stop. Full stop. And who knows? In a couple of years they might have written a fucking masterpiece. Even if they don't stop, if you attack them, they won't listen. People raise the drawbridge when they're under attack. If you want them to improve, you should respond to them with a detailed, thoughtful critique. And if you don't have time for that then leave them the fuck alone.
"But," I hear the snarksome reviewers protest, "We must mock, in order to warn people off the stuff we hate."
Again, I cry bollocks. You do not kill a story, or novel, published or not, by giving it notoriety. You want to kill this book, ignore it. Let it drown in the web's white noise and no amount of clapping will bring it back from where obscurity will send it.
Be honest. You snark because you enjoy it. Because it makes you feel good to be witty and clever and cruel and to make people laugh. Its human, its understandable, its certainly why I do it. But its also why big kids flush smaller kids heads down the crapper.
This will almost certainly be a shout into the wilderness. Hell, *I'll* probably be back at the shit-slinging tomorrow, but I had a moment of clarity. And I thought I'd share.