no really

Stupid things I have said that people have taken seriously:
• I'm a French-Canadian war orphan
• I'm going to start a clothing label, Norma Jeans. In addition to selling retardedly tight denim, the company will produce wrist-gash temporary tattoos.
• I have a big bag of space rocks, which are crack rocks dipped in PCP, in my backpack. You kids need any? Five bucks.

Sarcasm: You say something phenomenally stupid, first with the intent of communicating exactly the opposite of what has been said (because it was stupid), and second, to emphasize that what you said is stupid, and so is anybody that would agree. The more serious your tone, and the more outrageous the claim, the funnier it is, just because of the greater disparity between what is meant and what is said.

Unfortunately, there is a problem. One would hope that if I were to say something such as "I got the space rocks," you would say "Ha! What a delightful joke. Suburban college kids don't actually got the space rocks." But as it turns out, sarcasm will ultimately fail because everybody else but me is a moron.

I witness this constantly. I don't know about you, but I've had to use the phrase "I was just being sarcastic" far more than I should. Maybe it's unfair to expect people to know me well enough to know when I'm "lying," but I guess I understand how terrible it would be to be stupid that you think an ethnic French-Canadian looks like a Korean kid. Wait, nevermind, I lied. I have no conception of what it's like to be that dense. I can't imagine it.

Nonetheless, I will sympathize with those people in the world that just don't get it, the ones who live where people speak plainly, the douchebags that constantly remind me that sarcasm is the lowest form of wit. Sarcasm, and his father Irony, should be seen for what they are: Great big walls, keeping the stupid from scrambling north into the liberating lands of intelligent discourse. How can we ever expect to have a truly democratic debate on a level playing field when the smarty-pants types won't even say what they mean?

Is this just me? Are there other people out there who are too sarcastic for their own good? Is it our fault?

For more, incredibly (stupidly) detailed reading on Sarcasm, consult Wikipedia.