Q: I feel hurt, confused, frustrated, unhappy, faithless, neglected, morose, depressed, angry, melancholy, abandoned, insecure, world-weary, luckless, picked on, inept, restless, petulant, jealous, like the fabric of my sanity has been rent by God himself, listless, languorous, craven, debased, degraded, dehumanized, physically unattractive, unloved, directionless, vengeful and pissed off, all because of something someone said in the chatterbox. Nobody seems to care, or even notice. Why?

A: They were being sarcastic. Sarcasm is a form of humor wherein the perpetrator of the humor (also known as the jokester, wiseguy, smartguy, wise acre, smart aleck, wiseass or Mr. I-think-I'm-so-fucking-smart) parodies an opinion by claiming that opinion as his own. More generally, sarcasm is the act of saying something one doesn't really mean for the sake of a few cheap laughs. So, hypothetical Everything2 user AndrewMcCarthy doesn't really (hypothetically) believe that all Vietnam veterans should be castrated with the pliers-extracted teeth of filthy immigrants; rather, she finds the idea apalling, and expresses this viewpoint through sarcasm. See?

Coming to understand sarcasm is a transcendent, enlightening experience; it enables one to sit mildly back in one's chair with a cocktail and a smoke, chuckling at peptic-acid-churning invective and grisly death threats as they float through the chatterbox. There is no greater pleasure than /msging a "How rich! Good one, mate!" to the noder who's just threatened to rape your dog, secure in the knowlege that you're both reasonable adults who appreciate a good-natured roast now and then.

Remember: people rarely say what they mean on Everything2. So the next time humor strikes, relax: do some yoga, put on some James Taylor, shoot some heroin into the underside of your tongue. The noders are just pulling your chain again. It's "funny."