Sarchasm

Sarchasm - The chasm that exists between the person being sarcastic and the receiver who does not understand it.

That's how I feel sometimes, that I give out too much sarchasm. I'm way too sarcastic for my own good, but I don't mean it in a harmful way. If you look up sarcasm in the dictionary, the definition is given as "A cutting, often ironic remark intended to wound". But that's not the only use of sarcasm. I use it in a humourous way, as mentioned in Wikipedia article. Maybe I should say that I'm ironic rather than sarcastic. Whatever I do, sometimes people misread it. They don't see the different vocal intonations that I use and how I over emphasize the words. It just goes right over their heads.

I know now that with some people, I can be totally sarcastic as they fully understand it and do it a lot themselves. However, with other people, they see the sarcasm as me being mean. I just have to pick and choose when I can be sarcastic. I will only tend to be sarcastic now to people who I know understand it and don't take offence. It's quite hard for me since I'm so used to being sarcastic around my friends who do similar back.

It's even worse to be sarcastic via email. I have gotten into quite some trouble when I thought that I was being sarcastic in my emails since I put in a lot of smiley faces :-) and laughing hehehe hahaha. But some people still don't understand this. The problem with emails is that there are no vocal tones or facial expressions even. People read the emails and put their own personality into it. So if someone is serious, they read the email is serious. If someone is sarcastic like myself, I read serious emails from people as sarcasm and hence reply similarly. For example, one friend wrote an email about some information to another friend. That other friend replied with the simple one word response, "interesting". The first friend thought the second friend was being smart and didn't appreciate the work he went to get the information. However, I later told him that he had misread the second friend's sincerity with his own sarcasm. Hence you need to be very clear when using sarcasm in emails as it is easily misunderstood.

Basically, I have learnt to control my tongue more and not to make what I think are humourous comments but others may take the wrong way. In fact, just today someone told me "enough sarcasm", even though I was just making a comment and wasn't even being sarcastic. It was just that they expect it from me so thought I was being smart. I'm slowly learning and have tried very hard to correct my faults.