Sarcasm is the final destination for many would-be comics. They say one thing and mean another. Wow, that is so rich and humorous! You see what he did there? He lied! Sarcasm is hard to convey with text because it relies on tone, facial cues, and emphasis. But sarcasm is a necessary stop in the humorist's evolution. Why? Because it allows the joker to say two things at once. A very powerful tool because it turns the joke into an inside joke. The joker knows a little secret, and if you laugh you do as well. But, don't you just hate inside jokes? Why leave people out on the fun intentionally? The danger of a sarcastic sense of humor is that the joker loses the line between joke and regular talk. For the sarcastic person the jokes become more and more inside so that no one besides the joker has any idea about his true feelings.
I remember back when I was a young little class cut-up there was a day where I was no longer funny, but sarcastic. "Oh that Robin, he's just so sarcastic, he's gonna be quite the cynic when he grows up." It took me months to overcome that little speedbump. I trained myself with the same advice given to that little bunny from Bambi, "if you don't have anything nice to say don't say anything at all." I didn't want to be sarcastic, I wanted to be funny. So I shut the hell up and opened my ears and listened and listened until I heard from where the laughs were coming.
When you hear a sarcastic joke you laugh at the subject. It's funny because you understand the disparity between what the joker said and what is actually the case. The laughter from irony however, is directed at the words, is directed at the joke itself rather than its intent and subject matter. And in essence irony is the same as sarcasm. There is irony in every sarcastic joke, but while sarcasm is directed at a subject, irony is only interested in itself. Irony is selfish and evil. Irony wants to tear down the walls of the universe. It exists for the people that know nothing is as it seems. Irony points out the breakdown of perception and reality. And irony allows for true humor because it gives the comic the power to make his own universe. If the comic recognizes that what we perceive is not real, then he can replace 'reality' in his audience's mind with whatever universe he wants. Sarcasm mostly deals with opposites, irony deals with whatever it wants.
Evidence that Irony is the end-all-be-all for comics everywhere is that it also is an important tragic device. The Comic and the Tragic builds his universe with ironic atoms, building blocks of his own choosing. Reality is merely a clay model for both the tragedian and the comedian. But while the tragedian is interested in the fall of man, interested in the individual, the comedian is interested in the holes of the universe, the comedian is interested in pointing out that the theater is made out of clay.
