Who owns Oscar Wilde’s “lowest form of wit”?

Dear Hipster:

Hipsters are known for having a generally snarky attitude towards most things, but they hardly own what Oscar Wilde called “the lowest form of wit.” Why is snark so easy?

— Max

That’s a super simple question, so of course it can’t get a super simple answer. I want you to start by thinking about the relationship between Stephen King books and Stephen King movies. Lots of people love Stephen King books. I think I read somewhere about how The Stand is one of the ten most popular books in the history of ever, ranking close to Moby Dick in the realm of popular American fiction, or something to that effect. That’s an insanely high level of popularity. You only get that kind of popularity when you appeal to basically anyone and everyone, which is the pop culture equivalent of hitting over .400 in a baseball season. Then there are Stephen King movies, which I might more accurately call “movies based on Stephen King books” if that weren’t impossibly cumbersome. Lots of people hate Stephen King movies, and will freely corner you in the grocery store (or shout into the darker corners of the internet) with a rant about how “THE BOOK IS BETTER” or some permutation thereof. The only Stephen King movie people don’t seem to hate is The Shining, which is ironic because it’s the only Stephen King movie that Stephen King actually hates.

Now, I’ve got no opinion on whether Stephen King books are better than Stephen King movies. I’m a keen observer of unimportant aspects of humanity, not a critic, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t take a moment to point out (for the very few who might have missed it) the borderline-lethal dose of irony in that whole situation. The best part is how it ends up with basically everyone angry about something: fans of the books are mad about the movies; fans of the movies are mad about being talked down to by the fans of the books; and the guy who wrote the books is kind of peeved about the whole thing. It’s a delightful panoply of bruised egos and offended sensibilities, which, weirdly enough, leads to people being happier in the long run. This is because people need something to be riled up about.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I agree that, as a general matter, it’s better to go through life not wasting your energy being mad about stuff. The average person gets about 28,000 days to be alive, and those are generally better spent laughing than growling. But it’s also true that a little enmity goes a long way towards making sure those 28,000 days actually meant something. We need to feel incensed by something in order to know who we are. It lets us choose when and where we will — if you’ll pardon this play on words — make a stand on something, even something as objectively meaningless as the relative superiority of creepy books and their creepy movie adaptations.

An appropriate measure of snark or sarcasm is a healthy expression of this human need to be irritated. That’s what makes it so easy. It’s the natural way to put the world in its place, and put your place in the world at the same time.