"Snark"

I've posted about reader comments before, the kind you find at the end of almost any newspaper's online stories. That so-called "dialogue" often descends quickly into name-calling and "snark*", which was the topic of an interview during this morning on NPR's "Morning Edition".

The author of a book by that name, "Snark", suggests it's ruining true dialogue. And David Denby is a movie reviewer by trade, so maybe he should know about dialogue.

*"Snark" hasn't made it into the dictionary yet...the current definition there is "any kind of unexplained or threatening event on a computer (especially if it might be a boojum). Often used to refer to an event or a log file entry that might indicate an attempted security violation..." But in the author's usage, snark means a putdown, a "a tone of teasing or snideness", and not just online.