“But oh, beamish nephew, beware of the day, If your Snark be a Boojum! You will softly and suddenly vanish away, And never be met with again!”
—Lewis Carroll
Is there anything worse than “snark”? (They call it snark, by the way, because “second-rate zingers made by fag hags on blogs about celebrity shoes” didn’t fit on a Tumblr address.) As a comedic tool, snark reminds me of the spoiled nine-year-old cousin who runs amok at family picnics wearing a bikini and a tiara while insisting everyone watch her do cartwheels. Snark is to actual comedy as the Jersey Shore is to a proper vacation—yes, there are people who enjoy it, but they have spray-on tans and mild learning disabilities.
Enter Your Ecards! This website allows anyone with an Internet connection and a keyboard a chance to be SNARKY! No longer does a person need to possess the basic intelligence to work the Type tool in Photoshop. Today, all you need are fingers and you, too, can be Mark Twain (that is, if Twain talked less about American culture and more about pussy farts).
Some Ecards, which hosts the user cards, actually employs professional writers, which clearly is not a mistake. Looking at Your Ecards is like watching Starman learn to use credit cards or Darryl Hannah eat a lobster in Splash. It’s close to sarcasm, but it’s not quite on-point. Why? In the words of Ancient Aliens dude Giorgio A. Tsoukalos: “ALIENS!”
I went to the user-submitted section of SomeEcards and picked out a few examples of aliens-trying-to-write-sarcasm-in-ecard-form. It didn’t take long to find what I needed. The “others” have landed. We have made contact. The good news is: They’re not fitting in very well. The bad news is: They definitely have anal probes.
This particular witticism starts off with a classic misdirection. “Do what?!” the author asks incredulously. Yet what we ultimately find here is not a call to action, but instead an all-too-human commentary on the pain of betrayal. The author then employs the classic tactic of self-deprecation by admitting she thought LOL stood for “Lots of Love”! This allows us to empathize, even if there is nothing left for us to “do.”
It’s that time again! Time when your jerky parents start bitching you out about getting a summer job! This ecard speaks to the heart of all of us who think we are better than everyone else in the entire goddamn working world. “Don’t you know who I am?” asks Ted Nugent. “I’m living in your basement and you can’t stop me!” Boom! How ya like me now? The Nuge does not work at Duane Reade, bitches. Now get out of my room, Mom! [whispered: "you cunt!"]
The beauty of empty space! I wish a mutha fucka would, too… but, what? What, exactly, do we wish a mutha fucka would? A few options:
a.) Write me a song on a Bengal tiger with lyrics constructed from rose petals and the tears of deceased kings (romantic!).
b.) Learn to drive the Big Rigs at the New England Tractor Trailer Training School.
c.) Stop leaving his Fleshlight in the dishwasher, or at least peel the Kleenex off it first.
d.) Turn into a gypsy moth and fly into my bug light, baby. And by ‘bug light,’ I mean anus.
e.) Contract a kind of super-specialized AIDS that only affects the ability to write Your Ecards.
Say! Did you know that your pussy has such a strong odor it is capable of anthropomorphizing an onion? This odor will then cause the onion to grow human eyes and a complex nervous system, after which your pussy will disturb this same onion in such a way that tears will actually fall out of its newly formed onion tear ducts. Your Ecards!
OH MY GOD YOU GUYS THIS WOMAN IS TOTALLY UP SHIT’S CREEK WITHOUT A PADDLE. SHE ENJOYS EATING PEANUT BUTTER SUNDAES! SHIT IS ABOUT TO GO DOWN, NIGGAS! CHOPPER IN THE TRUNK!
When you said you couldn’t care less, I was disappointed, but I was still willing to give you space. I thought “OK, maybe he’s having a bad day, and I do have a way of really laying my shit on people sometimes.” Then, suddenly, I’m reading, and like “rat’s ass” comes out of nowhere and I’m like WAIT A SECOND! Is he joking now or what? Suddenly there was an extra line and I was like, ZING! You got me this time you old bastard, but you just wait, because I’m going to murder you in your sleep with an ax.
Just letting you know I don’t do anal, pal. In case you want to cancel that date tomorrow. Also, I speak Greek, but I don’t care about it.
When I meet someone for the first time, I like to call them a “dick” straight outta the gate. YOU ARE A DICK, I say loudly! I’ve confused sarcasm with unnecessary and inappropriate violent aggression. I am the 99%.
Hey! Do you know the girl that doesn’t do anal? I have a feeling you two would be super BFFs until you murder-suicide each other with a Gucci purse.
Ooh! “Chock the Monkey” is my favorite Peter Gabriel song! Anyway, you have to be careful when chocking the monkey. Urban legends claim it can result in loss of eyesight and hairy palms. IN YOUR EYES! THE LIGHT, THE HEAT!
This dapper Victorian child is capable of eating our moon. Get it? He’s like a moon-eating Borg-demon-thing, you know! Maybe he is a distant cousin of Galactus, devourer of worlds. Look, it’s kind of Andy Kaufman-ish, it’s a Dada-esque piece, I don’t expect you plebeians to understand art (P.S. FUCKING ALIENS!).
WONK! HONK! SARCASM ALERT!! CAUTION; SARCASM! SARCASM MODE: ON. I AM FLUENT IN ENGLISH AND SARCASM. DO NOT FEED THE SARCASM, MAY TRANSFORM INTO SARCASTIC BITCH, PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK. BOO-YAH! DIAL TONE IN YO’ FACE!
Well that’s very Pizza Hut of you, Starbucks! Bitch, you ain’t Rainforest Cafe and you don’t serve no onion stacks, so you best Cinnabon your Super Stop and Shop to Waffle House so you can Krispy Kreme up the Cracker Barrel and send an express delivery of California Pizza Kitchen over to Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse TGI Fridays Gloria Jean’s Coffee………APPLEBEES, BITCH!!!
Under what circumstances would this sentence have a corresponding meaning in English? Is this a political statement on anorexia? GMOs? Is she supposed to be a robot kid from AI whose face melted when he ate spinach (remember that scene? I was like, OH SHIT, FACEMELT!) Anyway, fucking vegans.
What kind of relationship were you in that you had to wait until you broke up in order to ask your man to wash the crust off his dong? Are you a Muslim chick? Did you break up because your breath smelled like smegma from slurping his unwashed cock? Look, the time to address penile hygiene is BEFORE the penis goes into your face, not two weeks later via a link to Your Ecards on Facebook while he’s fucking your sister.
OK. I thought about this one for a long time and I think I’ve got it! The author believes he or she is making a joke about drinking polar bear shit. Right? Because we could be drinking straight out of a glacier thinking it is clean, but then—then—it turns out that the bear has just defecated in it, OH NO! The bear doesn’t shit in the woods, though (since he is an arctic polar bear, I guess?) he shits in our drinking water. However, since we drink bottled water (right?), we are safe from cholera and other waterborne diseases which are closely associated with fecal matter contaminating your drinking supply! Got it?
Hey, who says a joke isn’t funny if you have to explain it?
Very adroit observations, Kyria. LOL!
george washington was in a cult, and that cult was into aliens
Kyria kills it every post. Someone give her a damn raise
All jokes could use more polar bear shit.
Snarky! You should go for a job as a staff writer at Some Ecards!
P.S. Some seriously funny shit though.
P.M.S. “I have to wash it first? This relationship is just way too much work!”
this was actually funny…
Harrumph.
That dude rules.