85 People Make Jokes About Supposedly Mind-Blowing Details From Famous Movies And TV Shows (New Pics)

Sarcasm is prevalent in modern society. It is in movie dialogues that many people love to quote, or in the wisecracks people share in everyday life. 

In a way, modern society runs on irony, and we are expected to comprehend. The inability to do so can be a knock on our social skills.

As University of California at San Francisco neuropsychologist Katerine Rankin said in an interview with Smithsonian Magazine, “Our culture is permeated with sarcasm.” 

“People who don’t understand sarcasm are immediately noticed. They’re not getting it. They’re not socially adept.”

Linguist John Haiman went on to describe sarcasm as a “primary language.” And while he recognizes how the use of such a mocking, almost snug tone can offend people, sincerity can also be a disadvantage. 

“You’re distancing yourself, you’re making yourself superior. If you’re sincere all the time, you seem naive,” Haiman said in the same interview.

It’s one thing to speak sarcastically in real life, but it’s another thing to do so via text. You can argue that conveying such a tone can be more challenging, especially since emotions don’t translate well through writing. 

Chatham University psychological scientists Monica Riordan and Lauren Trichtinger conducted a study that measured people’s accuracy in gauging the tones of emails sent by friends and complete strangers.

As Riordan pointed out, readers can determine that a text carries an angry tone, but they cannot gauge its level of anger. 

“The loss of this subtlety could lead to consequences in many forms– especially in our relationships, where the difference between annoyance and rage can be vast, and a simple misinterpretation of an intended emotion can lead to a drastic alteration in that emotion,” she said.