What a REALLY Good Idea...

Dear Readers! Have any of you heard about the Sarc Mark? Oh, have you not? It's really great.

Basically, some chap has decided that people are fucking stupid enough to not realise something may be written sarcastically and they need a further item of punctuation in their lives to avoid this. But of course, he's copywrited his 'SarcMark' and you need to pay him to download the software for this really, really good invention.

My favourite bit of his website is the FAQ's - featuring these classics I reproduce here for your delectation:

Q: Why use the SarcMark? I don't like sarcasm.
A: The Merriam Webster dictionary defines sarcasm as a mode of satirical wit and states that a similar word for sarcasm is the word "wit". Wit is defined as "The natural ability to perceive and understand; intelligence". Therefore, when you use it, you are intelligent.

What he's basically saying here is "You are a bit of a dick if you don't like Sarcasm. Try and be a bit more sarcastic unless you want people to think you are a bit thick." Shit, I better start using it then. I really had.

The FAQ section soon descends into a tirade against alternatives to the SarcMark.

Q: Can't I use a smiley face?
A: Do you really like those things as they dance, talk and jiggle across your screen? They look like a cross between a gremlin, zombie, and some smiling pervert

What I think he is saying here is "Are you a fucking paedophile? You are if you use those smiley faces instead of my SarcMark you fucked-up freak!" Next up:

Q: Can't I use a tilde?
A: That's the character that looks like ~. It means "approximately" in math, "not" in logic, the "user's home directory" in programming and when placed over a character, it denotes a palatal nasal sound. Oh yeah, let's now use it for sarcasm

Now this is the FAQ I really don't understand. He is saying that the tilde is already used for many things - and as such I'd have thought he'd go on to suggest surely that we have exhausted the tilde's possible uses and that it would be silly to also use this for sarcasm. But then in his last sentence, he seems to contradict his point by saying "let's now use it for sarcasm". I don't understand where he's coming from. I mean he can't be being sarcastic, can he? There is no SarcMark there at the end after all...

Either way, this is clearly a really good idea. I can't wait to pay my $1.99 to get the SarcMark Software. Oh yeah, I'm really quite erotically excited about it.

Did you notice the sarcasm? Hopefully you did, unless you are backward. Notice I didn't need to use the SarcMark? How Ironic!

Speaking of which - how about a symbol for when you use Irony in a written statement? I'll call it the "Ironica"®.

I've done a rough mock-up of what the Ironica® will look like - here it is on the right.

But here's the funny thing... I don't even care about punctuation! How Ironic.