As you may know, I’m all about irony, satire, and sarcasm. I’m also all about pastiche, outright parody, and basically any form of stuff that makes fun of, and otherwise exposes inconsistencies in, things. These are often used interchangably, but they do have very specific meanings. The thing about irony, in particular, is that, ironically enough, most people use the term rather loosely, and hence, incorrectly. The fact of the matter is that there are different forms of irony, which only complicates the matter.

The now-classic and oft-cited example—to the point where it’s basically a cliché—is the Alanis Morisette song Irony. The events in the song are not ironic. The astute have pointed out that what is ironic is a song, purporting to be about irony, containing none. Reportedly, Morisette has acknowledged this (a cop-out rather than a planned joke, I think). This makes the song meta-ironic. It is ironic about irony—which, you will note, is not, in itself, ironic.

It’s important to point out that irony is not the same as sarcasm, but it shares some of the same properties, particularly that it can be applied to other versions of itself. This is the post-modernism which I enjoy so much: stuff being applied to the same sort of stuff, recursively. Sarcasm I find myself using often—too often in some cases, whereupon it becomes impossible for people to tell if I’m actually being sarcastic or not. Ironically, asking for clarification makes it worse. (No, I did not use the word correctly.)

My friend, Graham, and I were discussing this a few weeks ago. He had mentioned a fantastic idea that another guy he knew came up with: the Eight Levels of Sarcasm. The idea says that, depending on your response to certain phrases, you can either acknoledge the phrase on the expected level, or create a new “meta” level of sarcasm, or irony, or parody, or whatever. The original Eight Levels was being applied to sarcasm, but I see no reason why it can’t be applied to anything. The reason for eight levels in particular, opposed to seven or nine, is because this corresponds to the number of pieces of information the average person can store in short term memory. For most people, it’s about eight, hence eight levels of recursion.

I’ve noticed this sort of thing happening more often in regards to internet drama. I invented a new word for it: the dramanet. This is essentially what the internet is in any place where discussion happens and it’s also, among other reasons, why I very rarely participate in forums, or post comments to other people’s blogs or what have you. I don’t like going out there and arguing on other people’s terms, and furthermore, little is ever presented in the way of a true argument, anyway. It’s just drama. One site which is notorious for this sort of nonsense is Digg.

But what I’ve been noticing more and more is recursion as it applies to the sarcasm level of the drama. In the case of news aggreggator sites like Digg where users vote on stories they think are more important in order to push them to the front page, the sort of news you get is a few “real” headlines with a lot of internet apocrapha. In particular, Digg is known for its conspiracy theorists who routinely digg stories which would be controverstial, if they were true. Arguements as to their validity ensue.

Let’s use the not-very pretend example of, well, pretty much anything having to do with religion. This is full of meta-sarcastic comments.

1. A snide comment about religion is made. (Level 1)

2. Snide comment about the person who made the snide comment about religion is made. This is also level one, unless…

3. Someone makes a comment remarking about how the person making a snide comment about the person who made a snide comment about religion isn’t really being representative of a holder of that religion. Commenter Two must have been sarcastic. This elevates itself to level 3 and the other comment which was intended to be level 1 to level 2.

4. Someone makes a comment about the Flying Spaghetti Monster—in all apparent seriousness—announcing that the previous three commenters will be boiled alive in a tasty broth. (Ra-men!) This is level 4.

5. Someone else makes a comment that says the FSM has to be real because there was that one video of it with those German guys—and there’s no video of God, now is there? This is obviously sarcastic which would make it appear the person was a pro-Flying-Spaghetti-Monster-ite, but true FSM-ers don’t sarcastically acknowlege the FSM because this defeats the point. SO, this commenter must be mocking the FSM, and is therefore not a supporter. It is anti-sarcasm sarcasm but since the previous comment was sarcastic, it becomes level 5.

And so on.

The point is that people are sometimes consciously participating in building levels of sarcasm to the point where no one knows who’s putting on whom. In fact, you can’t even be sure that it’s a joke—because that could be part of a joke. Even a connoisseur of sarcastic recursion such as myself can become confused if he’s not paying attention.

But moreso than recognizing that this interesting interaction is going on in the first place, I’m interested in why it’s sprung up at all. It definitely seems to be a modern (that is to say, contemporary) mode of discourse, something that was not prevelent in older correspondence much, if at all. I believe this is an indicator of something positive.

On the one hand, it could simply be that language is developing into a sort of “soft meaning” exchange of information. That is, everything is malleable to the point where discussing something in a given language automatically means nobody can be sure that any claims made are presented straightforward with no ulterior meanings. The language would be the carrier of the sarcasm level rather than tone or body language. Perhaps the death of English will result from this very thing? Perhaps it will die out as a result of being imprecise—or more correctly, because anything spoken in English could not be taken seriously. Then again, it could just be me.

In any case, the broader concept: that our style of conversation has changed to allow multiple meanings within a sentence and that people are actually taking advantage of this, not just for comedic effect, but in pointing out incongruities within established structures of culture; this bears hope. It means that there is a certain percentage of the population—a younger generation, I would venture to say—who accepts a broader range of valid discussion methods than has traditionally been demonstrated. In turn, this means that the very foundation of what we, as a culture, consider to be valid and appropriate can change.

This intially might seem like nothing new. After all, as a culture we no longer think slavery to be acceptable. That fact alone is an indication that culture can change—that we can become, as it were, more cultured. However, this is not what I’m getting at. Indeed, it’s not even a matter of language developing as it naturally would, where words change meaning over time and soforth. Many people believe that language—it’s structure and grammar opposed to simply its vocabulary—shapes a person’s perception of the world. This is known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.

By seeing a growing use of recursion—notably in the use of sarcasm and satire to expose invalid points of view—we are also witnessing a shift in the way language “compartmentalizes” the brain. If the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis holds true, this means that we have yet another tool with which to fight ignorance. Never mind that irony is lost on its audience; the more people who recognize that recursion is a legitamite method of argument construction, the more our culture will shift away from superstition. This has already manifested itself in arguments (which, admittedly, are rather old) where recursion is key: who makes the maker, and soforth. The idea that there must have been a first cause to the universe—and that God is this cause—this is a recursive argument where recursion is eschewed for a beginning. The point of this article is not to argue it one way or the other, but simply to say that this notion of recursion is not only being applied to the world at large (as in the older example of the “First Cause” arguement), but now also to the very language which is used to discuss the world in the first place.

This can only be a good thing. While there is much drama on the internet, the structure of this drama reveals a shift in the very nature of the usage of the English language. It means culture can change over generations; which means that maybe there is hope for mankind.

Then again, maybe the conclusions in this article are sarcastic. You wouldn’t really have any way of knowing, would you?

-Ted