[oblio]

Having been brought up in a positive environment, yet full of sarcasm, I'm not sure I buy this argument.

Yes, there must be a balance. But sarcasm and negativity are part of our everyday life as adults and we should learn how to handle them.

[SeeDave]

The best way to handle sarcasm and negativity is, in my opinion, to reduce contact and/or interaction. To not reward such behavior and instead choose to associate with positive people.

The problem is that school-kids are forced into repeated, unsupervised interactions where they are often deliberately and persistently targeted by aggressors.

Out of curiosity, what purpose does sarcasm serve you? What do you get out of sarcastic interactions?

[jdietrich]

>Out of curiosity, what purpose does sarcasm serve you?

"Ha ha, only serious". Gentle mockery can be a non-threatening way of expressing grievances and telling people difficult truths. A joke can be a very useful way of letting someone know that they're annoying us, that their work isn't up to par or that their haircut is unflattering. It's why the British excel at it - we're not very good at blunt truths, so we tend to make a joke of things.

A classic example might be the British way of greeting someone who is late - a gently sarcastic "nice of you to join us". It gets the message across without being a direct admonishment. Most of us would be unwilling to directly criticise a colleague for slacking, but we'd find it far easier to sarcastically remark "you must be rushed off your feet".

Nobody wants to be surrounded by relentlessly negative people, but uncritical cheerleaders can be just as harmful. Sometimes we need to be told things that we don't want to hear, lest we turn into vainglorious prima donnas, drifting through life with a total obliviousness to our obvious shortcomings. Sarcasm, irony and gentle mockery can make that bitter pill a little easier to swallow.

[watwut]

Or you could directly tell them they are annoying or that they work is not sufficient instead of being passive aggressive and hide behind jokes. Bonus will be that even dudes and dudettes with asperger will know what hostility is all about.

Sarcasm turns factual debate about performance into personal attack - and people have full right to respond in kind.

[debatem1]

It's communication. If you communicate what you want and not what you don't, it's successful by definition.

The point made above is that sarcasm can be a way of communicating what you want (eg, "you're late") without what you don't want ("you should be ashamed/feel bad/apologize/etc"). This unwanted implicit communication is common in blunt statements of fact and is part of why that communication style is often described using words like blunt or harsh.

In this sense, sarcasm and similar serve the opposite role to the one you describe: a way of jokingly or obliquely raising criticism without demanding a direct response. Of course, those criticisms can be personal-- but that's a property of criticism, not of its style of delivery.

[barrkel]

It's stops people's egos getting too big, and keeps them grounded. Verbal play, attack and defence is also an education for more subtle interactions later in life. Like it or not, adult life is a sea of competition and words are weapons.

[bittercynic]

In some domains this is absolutely true. If you're lucky, you have options to explore outside of those domains.

[jacobolus]

If you handle other people’s sarcasm, cynicism, sardonicism, nihilism, ... by eliminating interaction with them, you’ll miss out on hanging out with some truly hilarious and insightful people throughout your life. YMMV.