The Joke's On You: Recognizing Sarcasm Gives Me The Social Upper Hand
SCIENCE HAS HANDED ME THE ULTIMATE DEFENSE FOR MY SARCASM: My forked tongue proves that I am socially savvy, can read verbal cues and am not suffering from brain damage. So there, Mom! You should thank god for my talent!
The proof is in the parahippocampal gyrus, so says neurophysiologist Katherine Rankin of the University of California, who used an MRI to detect what part of the brain was "turned on" by sarcasm.
As the New York Times put it, "What you may not have realized is that perceiving sarcasm, the smirking put-down that buries its barb by stating the opposite, requires a nifty mental trick that lies at the heart of social relations: figuring out what others are thinking."
This skill of recognition helps us separate danger from safety, enemy from friends -- in short, to survive.
To honor this great scientific discovery, I was going to pay homage to a few moments in my life when sarcasm saved me, but then I got distracted and started watching TV's timeless ode to sarcasm: Seinfeld. The episode was “The Switch,” when George dates a woman he thinks is bulimic and Jerry dates a woman who doesn’t laugh at any of his jokes. Early in the episode, Jerry remarks to Elaine: “I mean, how can I be with someone who doesn’t laugh?!”
Jerry has a point. I can’t imagine being friends with or dating someone that "doesn't get it." I like to think that those of us inclined to be witty and sarcastic are the more successful members of society, able to balance humor and seriousness all in one quick stab of the tongue. And now that I know that every snarky comment is a test, I plan on measuring the efficacy of each parahippocampal gyrus that I encounter. And I'll have the perfect rationalization: I'm just helping the human race to survive.
Anna Apocalypse, who blogs at Pop Apocalypse.Blogspot.com, comments periodically at CrabbyGolightly.com on music and pop culture.
Posted August 3, 2008
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