... a tad snarky, and feeling guilty for it.

I was in a bus shelter after work yesterday minding my own when I found myself in a lunk-headed but mercifully brief back and forth with someone who I'm certain was a New York Post journalist. Here is a transcript, with a cameo by my internal monologue.

New York Post: Are you waiting for the bus?
ME: (IN A BUS SHELTER and also not painting a landscape.) Yeah.
NYP: Which one?
ME: The twenty-seven.
NYP: Has it been by yet?
Internal Monologue: Yeah, it has. But in eager anticipation of this conversation and because my ears aren't quite as frostbitten as I'd like them to be, I waved it on by. Imagine my irrepressible glee when I saw you coming towards me, literally brimming with insightful and penetrating queries. Lay another one on me Larry King. Perhaps you'd like me to describe just what the aneurysm you're going to cause me feels like.
ME: Not just yet.

Of course I didn't snark this person out right. I would never do that. But was I being a jerk for even thinking of a retaliatory salvo of venom? This person's questions, while powerfully stupid, were harmless and cost me nothing. But my almost instantaneous reaction was to get all indignant that any of my woefully underutilized brainspace be taken up answering a question as dumb as "has the bus you're waiting for already come and gone?" In my continuing effort to grow, I'm not sure that being so shitty is behavior consistent with the person I want to become. Scarier still, I not sure I know how to react any other way.

This whole episode comes just two days after I mostly ignored an NPR interview with author and New Yorker film critic David Denby, who's new book Snark describes how vitriol, like the kind I dredged up at the bus stop, is damaging the way we communicate. Much of the author's disdain for snark seems to come from the anonymous and dark corners of the web. Where message board posters, on topics from comics to needlepoint, claw blindly at each other like kittens in a burlap sack. His concern being that any random troll with a chip on their shoulder can cause lasting personal and professional damage to anyone of their choosing. And can do so at no cost to themselves and with little fear of reprisal on account of the anonymity afforded them by the web. At the same time Denby applauds the use of snark for satirical purposes by people like Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert. I applaud them too, but it seems to me that the only way the author can provide to distinguish between what are and aren't acceptable uses of snark is that those that can get away with it be previously identified as satirists. Or, unless you're funny, you can't be snarky without also being an asshole. And while the Daily Show is almost always more entertaining than just about any message board out there, I'd like to believe that the fair use of language extends to us all regardless of how well known we are.
I wouldn't be surprised to find out that this book was born of one too many hateful, anonymous message board postings deriding Mr. Denby's opinions on film. And while it may have one of the most 'no shit' premises in recent non-fiction I still may have to read it if only to find out how we (I) came to be so angry.

*NOTE: I have since listened to the whole interview twice.