A Sincere Review of the SarcMark

Equal rights for Sarcasm –
Use the SarcMark.

Website for SarcMark

mycterismus (mik-ter-IS-mus), the sneer.  From the Greek, meaning “sneer.”

Questions get a mark, right? Even exclamations have a point! But poor sarcasm has gone unpunctuated—until now. A very earnest software developer offers a character that lets people know when you don’t mean what you say. For only $1.99, you can download the SarcMark (a symbol that, perhaps intentionally, seems to depict something being flushed down a toilet) and use it to end all your snarky sentences.

Personally, Figaro prefers his irony to remain ironic. Sarcasm marks have been absent from keyboards for a good reason. While an exclamation point amplifies a sentence, turning a holy cow into a HOLY COW!, a SarcMark undoes the sarcasm. The moment you say you’re being ironic, you aren’t.

On the other hand, unironic irony can become a form of irony, if it’s accompanied by an ironically ludicrous gesture. This is where the mycterismus comes in. A gesture or expression that shows contempt for the listener, it gets magnificent use in a Monty Python movie and in the routine that made Steve Martin famous: “Excuuuuuuuuusssssse meeeeeeeee.”

In other words, the SarcMark is a kind of emoticon. Most emoticons are free, and they’re absolutely worth the price. But while other emoticons show a smiley (or frowny) face, the SarcMark is more abstract. And abstract toilet art is worth a lot more than a smiley face.

NOT.

Comments

[duneview]

As recent iPhone/iPod users will tell you, we are being $1.99ed to death. "There's an app for that" is code for throw me a few bucks -you won't miss it and your screen can provide visual proof of just how cutting edge you are.

The SarcMarc is an all purpose tool - indispensable to today's snark inspired writing. Imagine the Gawker staff having to shell out $1.99 for each SnarcMarc's instance. Nick Denton would qualify for Tarp funds.

[Adam]

And of course, there's always this, proposed at the end of the 19th century:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony_mark

Somehow, I get the suspicion that the poet who came up with that didn't try to monetize it.

[Richard I. Garber]

Dave Kellett, who writes a comic strip called Sheldon, already has described several Punctuation Marks That Never Caught On. See his archive of three in a strip from June 9, 2008 and references to three older strips from May 8, 12, and 15 of 2006. A few are new but most others use existing characters (though sometimes in multiples like the triple slash).

[Figaro]

Beyond the mark itself, I'm beginning to think that unironic irony--irony that reveals itself--should gets its own trope status.