I just thought of something: reagarding the point if sarcasm can be seen as a weakness.....I don't know about weakness, but I can see why many people might see it as some kind of bitterness and hatred towards pretty much everything, especially if you are actually good with sarcastic comments and in general a clever verbal athlete; exactly for the reason yeeha just gave: you should have a straight face when throwing around sarcastic and sharp comments, so that less clever people, if you allow the expression, don't actually know if you are being serious or not. This also leads very often to people thinking you are somewhat of an asshole with an ego way too big for your own good. Unless these things are true, I don't think you can claim to be actually sarcastic by nature. And truly being a sarcastic asshole is not the same thing as throwing a spiteful joke here and there.
Furthermore it is interesting to see that most of the posters here so far claim to be very sarcastic people and I don't also buy that because being a smartass on a discussion forum is not the same thing as being clever in real life. I never considered myself to be hateful/sarcastic/whatever until couple of my friends pointed it out to me a few years back.
Of course this also could mean that spending as much time on these kinds of forums and internet in general as most of us do, tends to make everyone a bit bitter and sarcastic due to the sheer amount of crap floating around the net, so you have to take everything with a grain of salt which develops to being very immune to even some fairly serious stuff and we (I say we because I am one of these people) tend to make fun and wiseass remarks about even serious things.
I'm not sure if I am just talking out of my ass, but I may be on to something here, because I have noticed this with the people I hang around with, including both family and friends, that those that have a more rich and variable social life tend to be more blue eyed and in general light headed, meaning they tend to stress about smaller things a lot more than I do and are also more gullible.
And this brings on an interesting argument: these days it is very fashionable to say that internet and computers are making people increasingly stupid day by day. However if we (so far at least) agree that sarcasm and other similar ways of stating one's opinions are a sign of being smart and clever, in a certain way....then does that mean that internet can and does make you smarter, in some ways at least ?
I'm not saying internet is making the population altogether smarter but it is very intruiging that the vast majority of active posters on discussion forums tend to be more aware of today's world and what's going on globally, not just their school compared to your average teen or 20-something year old who spend most of their time hanging out with their friends, getting hammered, shopping or doing something else other than spending tme on the web. Or if I am being accurate about this, discussion forums tend to make people smarter, not neccessarily internet itself.
Hmmm.....interesting, I'm gonna have to give this some more thought.
