Blogs and sarcasm
People can only tell sarcasm from seriousness if they already share the viewpoint and ideology of the speaker. If they are sufficiently separated, ideologically, from the speaker, they won’t be able to tell the difference. Thus, sarcasm in a blog insulates it from outside opinion. It insulates it from anyone who would disagree. You can’t disagree, because if you do, you’re missing the point.
Now, sarcasm can be deployed selectively. For instance, a blog that genuinely tolerates dissent, but only within a limited range, can deploy sarcasm only on commenters that express viewpoints that fall outside that range. When it’s used like this, it’s not necessarily a bad thing. But blogs that thrive on sarcasm, like The Poor Man and Sadly, No, pretty much use sarcasm to deride anything outside of the extremely narrow viewpoint of the authors’.
I’m not criticizing these blogs, just elucidating their techniques. Sarcasm has its place. I would criticize them if there weren’t more tolerant blogs. And I think it would be just as well if this type of blog didn’t have comments, because the comments tend not to be interesting. (Fafblog was an exception.)
