Snarky is the new Aqua, which was the new Orange, which was the new Brown, and so on and so on, down to the color of the house that Jack built, which was itself the new Flagstone.
Now, it’s no secret that writers who report on trendy events and commodities tend to get a little catty. When your goal is to stay one step ahead of the game, cattiness gives you a well-shod leg up. As in, “Ooh, girl! Look at Miss Thing over there, with her handbag pulled straight from the Fall 2006 time capsule!” Suddenly you’re at the vanguard, and Miss Thing is trapped waist-deep in the bargain bin.
Recently, though, cattiness gave way to something more insidious: snarkiness. I know it’s a thin line–thinner than [insert celebutante joke here]–but there’s a difference. Catty is all in good fun. Catty is over the top. Catty is drag queens who dish it out, then share a bag of coke in the men’s room. By contrast, snarky is mean, underhanded, and underplayed. Holier-than-thou with a jigger of envy thrown in for good measure.
Recently, I’ve noticed an uptick in the nation’s snark level. Maybe it’s just because, as an avid homosexual, I’ve been reading the news from Fashion Week–which, by its very nature, veers toward unprecedented levels of snarkification. But even in that milieu, voices like those of New York magazine’s Fug Girls have been mitigated by tamer voices like Cathy Horyn, Eric Wilson, and even Guy Trebay at the New York Times, who prefer to give readers some historical context for their thoughtful critiques.
Well, unless you’ve been living under a heterosexual male rock for the past couple of weeks, you know that Cathy Horyn has started a blog. And she’s calling Thom Browne’s collection “Hobbitville” and wondering if she should buy a wig. Oh, Cathy….
Who is responsible for this? Some would point to the Michael Musto-Liz Smith cabal of gossip mongers, who’ve been doing this kind of thing for years. Others would cite that cave drawing from Lascaux where a tribesmen is snubbed after wearing the same loincloth for both hunting and gathering. But whether such shenanigans have been going on for decades or millenia, they’ve never made it to the mainstream. Now, suddenly, we’ve got pundits on every streetcorner–the equally hideous, equally ashen Nancy Grace and Glenn Beck come to mind–and they’re all sporting the same arched-eyebrow sneer. What the hell happened?
Personally, I blame Gawker. (Or credit them. The jury’s still out.) They single-handedly made snarky both fashionable and readily available. And they’re funny. Let’s face it: snark sells. But alas, not everyone can pull it off–which is why you may find me getting catty now and then, but I’ll take the long way around Snarkville, ’cause baby, I know when I’m beat.
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