indirect sarcasm

Indirect sarcasm is an art. I mean, to me, it is a very classy way of "shooting" people or talking back. Rather than being straight and making a person instantly angry, it is better still to beat around the bush, say something different but will ultimately lead to the intended meaning, letting the victim do some thinking before figuring out the real meaning. When the victim could not understand the indirect meaning, it makes him or her look silly. When the victim understands, heck cool. Sometimes, the in-between pauses before the victim really understands it also make them look foolish enough.

Now, the good part is, we never really say what we mean. The victim cannot directly blame or scold us bcos we didn't actually say it! The meaning of what we say depends on individual interpretation sometimes. You can always deny that you intended to mean it, with that yeah-i-mean-it look on your face. How frustrating will that be for the victim? Cos deep in the heart, the victim knows it, feels "pedas" but cannot do anything.

Sometimes, people are being unreasonable in quarrels and it is no point to explain or reason with them. In these situations, indirect sarcasm works best. We can admit defeat in an irritating way like "Yea, I can't do all these cos i'm not as "smart" as some people. His IQ is so high.. bla bla bla."

In fact, most of the time, this method is useful. You can spare the time spent on defending yourself and instead, admit defeat but make the winner look stupid. You don't need to win arguments with unreasonable people. Indirectly, you are the winner already cos in the end the one who feels the heavier embarrassment is not you.

It is obvious that people who keep shooting you just wants to irritate the hell out of you and make you angry. When you're angry, he/she wins. The more angry you are, the more you fight back and defend yourself, the happier he/she is. It is a trap for you to fall in. These people are prepared for arguments and have the points ready. So, you will only feel angrier and angrier at the end of the quarrel. Victory for the shooter. So, in these situations, we don't need to defend ourselves. We can just admit defeat by saying "yeah, I'm stupid" with that sarcastic, irritating oh-i'm-actually-stupid look on our faces. In your heart, you don't care what the person says. With that thick face, we are emotionally immune to their verbal abuse. We don't need to feel angry unnecessarily for the wrong reasons for the rest of the day bcos we have a life to get on with. And we can always take comfort from the fact that these people are so free to irritate us because we must have something that they are jealous of, or dengki.

Maybe, the main question to whether you need to defend yourself is, who is the person shooting you. Of course, if a close friend or direct family member talks bad about you, it hurts. You need to defend yourself bcos you care for your relationship with them. If some unimportant people comments negatively about you, why bother to defend youself or even care? They are not somebody to you. Their comments and what they think are not important to you. Unless if it affects your circle of friends' impression on you then you need to do something lah.

Of course, I'd like to learn more of indirect sarcasm cos it feels good when you manage to pull it off. But, most of the time, I feel it's better to be conservative a bit and stay out of trouble. If you lose arguments, you feel down in the dumps, thinking about it for the rest of the day. If you win arguments, you never know what sore losers will do to you next. After you say that you don't mean something with that yeah-i-mean-it face, the victim may give you a sweet punch on your innocent face. However, all these problems are bound to happen, so it's how wisely you deal with it that matters.