Today Is Snark Free Day, Officially, GREAT IDEA [Not Really]

Feeling touchy? Well, it’s Snark Free Day, so a few PR people on the internet would like you to keep your opinion to yourself, you hostile and insecure bully.

On Snark Free Day, October 22, 2013, PRConsultants Group has an educational video about some snarky hypothetical loser, and the dangers of oversnarking.

According to the lengthy lecture, Snark Free Day is a response to people who become snarkbeasts of snarktastic proportions, quickly leveling up from one nasty YouTube comment to a snark-filled existence in which everyone is secretly laughing at your unpleasant insecurity behind your back all the time.

Are the PR people behind Snark Free Day from New York? They don’t sound like they’re from New York. But here snark is about as easily left behind as subways and expensive daily consumables, so you guys can take your Snark Free Day back to Minnesota or wherever your slow-talking ass came from.

The premise behind Snark Free Day as explained by the PR group behind it is simple — make PR peoples’ jobs easier by not having unvarnished opinions:

“Instead of taking the cheap shot, take the high road. People have been emboldened by the anonymity and immediacy of online commenting. On Oct. 22, we’re asking others to commit to taking just a moment before speaking, hitting send or posting to think about the effect our words have on those who receive them. Be snark-free for one day.”

It’s probably true that snarking has become a bit too much of an easy fallback for the internet at large, but the whole premise of Snark Free Day is not only very loosely defined — why would we want to do this and for what goal? — it’s also really, really sanctimonious.

In the same breath as professing snark to be this grave sin of impoliteness, it takes this poor imaginary guy and projects a loser and bully-like history onto him merely because he engages in some sarcasm.

Essentially, it seems Snark Free Day has a glaring bit of hypocrisy attached to it — while “snark” may seem to be a less desirable style of communication, this sanctimonious “snark policing” is also fairly unpleasant.

Snark Free Day might seem like a nice PR-centric idea, but it seems like the net effect will just be people replacing or responding to snark with smug reproach. And the last thing we want to do is replace one “big meanie” behavior with another — after all, you never know why someone is snarking or if they’re responding to a touchy subject or bad day.

We think we’re going to counter the Snark Free Day hashtag, #snarkfreeday, with #vivalasnark. Do you think the world has gotten too snarky?