Sneer Tactics

[Snark: It's Mean, It's Personal, and It's Ruining Our Conversation, David Denby, Simon & Schuster, 144 pages] ANYONE WHO FOLLOWS gossip blogs and webby tabloids has probably read the term "snark"--but what exactly is it? Open to any page of David Denby's new book and you're likely to find an answer. Snark is "the bad kind of invective--low, teasing, snide, condescending, knowing." It plays on racial and gender stereotypes, but "is not the same as hate speech." Snark is "parasitic, referential, insinuating." It views the world as "a series of false appearances." It is "in general, not given to hard work." It "stinks up the air without liberating any laughter." It "serves not to break down walls of loneliness and fear, but to solidify them" and "stands for nothing and lets other people make fools of themselves." It "functions as the avant-garde of resentment." "Snark is not the same as irreverence or spoof," but instead displays "zero interest in civic virtue." It is the "expression of the alienated, of the ambitious, of the dispossessed." It relies on the "exhilaration of contempt," lacks a "coherent view of life," and fails to "honor the artistically and intellectually ambitious."