Study: Sarcasm = Evolutionary Survival
By Wyatt Earp | June 21, 2008
Well gee, that’s just super. Luckily for you people, I’m not sarcastic.
Humans are fundamentally social animals. Our social nature means that we interact with each other in positive, friendly ways, and it also means we know how to manipulate others in a very negative way.
Neurophysiologist Katherine Rankin at the University of California, San Francisco, has also recently discovered that sarcasm, which is both positively funny and negatively nasty, plays an important part in human social interaction.
Like I give a rat’s ass about human social interaction. Whatever, dude.
According to Dr. Rankin, if you didn’t get the sarcastic tone of the previous sentences you must have some damage to your parahippocampal gyrus which is located in the right brain. People with dementia, or head injuries in that area, often lose the ability to pick up on sarcasm, and so they don’t respond in a socially appropriate ways.
See? Everyone who doesn’t get this blog is an idiot. Like I couldn’t have told you all that before. Sheesh!
Presumably, this is a pathology, which in turn suggests that sarcasm is part of human nature and probably an evolutionarily good thing. (H/T – LiveScience)
Did you hear Professor Egghead? I am more advanced than you non-sarcastic people. Go figure.
Topics: Snarkasm | 7 Comments »
June 21st, 2008 at 4:13 am
so if I’m down to the last two brain cells, and they aren’t talking I’m in trouble????
June 21st, 2008 at 8:41 am
Sarcasm, you either get it or, I guess you go extinct.
June 21st, 2008 at 9:10 am
I think I’ve known some people who’ve had dementia their whole lives.
June 21st, 2008 at 12:32 pm
Wow, so my family’s highly evolved? All this time I just thought we were dysfunctional.
June 21st, 2008 at 2:33 pm
Like we’re going to believe what those quacks think.
heh
June 21st, 2008 at 4:16 pm
But what have you evolved into?
HA!
June 22nd, 2008 at 3:32 pm
So all those people with various objects up their butts, who get offended at every little thing, and must live in a politically correct world, all the time, are actually brain damaged idiots? Nice!