The No Snerking Rule is an Easy Way to Be Happier

I have a rule for myself: No snerking.

What does snerking mean? It’s mocking people who have different ideas or beliefs, in a way that expresses smug superiority.

The difference between snark and snerk is that snark is sarcastically mocking something; snerk is mocking something while demonstrating you believe the people connected to it are inferior and you are better than them.

(Note that the definition I’m using doesn’t quite match up to the dictionary or Urban Dictionary, though Urban Dictionary definitions 3 and 5 come close.)

Why do I have this rule? There are many reasons, but the most important is that refraining from snerking improves my mood, outlook, and happiness.

Snerking Trains You to Be Unhappy

Snerking can be fun. I won’t deny that.

So is eating a daily tub of ice cream, riding a motorcycle with no helmet, and drinking 12 shots of tequila. That doesn’t make them good ideas. (Especially if you do them all at the same time.)

It’s well known that the most effective way to train an animal is through positive reinforcement. This works on humans on well.

And when you are snerking, you are training yourself.

Snerking gives you a laugh, and a sense of smug superiority. It feels good. So it provides positive reinforcement.

But what behavior does this enforce?

It trains you to be contemptuous of other ideas. To be closed-minded, because giving fair consideration to a belief would make it harder to mock. To be arrogant. To look down on others. To stereotype and treat people as caricatures. To be cruel and insulting. And most importantly, to actively seek out that which is bad, while avoiding that which is good.

How Snerking Ruined Movies For Me

I know this from personal experience. During my internet argument addict days, I was quite adept at insulting people with different beliefs, showing them how superior I thought I was. Having gone through film school, I also turned my snerking skills toward movies.

I used to write essays blasting films, picking them apart for their flaws. This wasn’t a Cinemasins style hunt for minor details to nitpick. More like, “Here’s why this movie is terrible, and everyone involved is incompetent at filmmaking and should never be allowed near a camera again.”

I said this about nearly every movie I saw, as well as movies I didn’t see.

On the rare occasion that I thought a movie was good, I didn’t know how to write about it. I could tear apart movies in eloquent and humorous ways, but I couldn’t praise them. I’d have to find some flaw in the film to attack so that I could write anything at all.

When someone said they liked a movie, I’d insist that they were wrong, and rant about all the problems I had found.

I told myself that I was doing something valuable. Bad movies were offensive. By ripping apart what’s wrong with them, I was encouraging better movies to be made.

But the truth is, I was doing it because it was fun.

I had fun writing my snerk-filled screeds. People had fun reading them.

But I didn’t have fun watching movies.

Whenever I saw a movie, I was looking for reasons to rip into it. If I couldn’t find any, I was disappointed. Anytime I went to the theater I was left feeling cold and empty. I didn’t even bother to see most movies, because I snerked at their very existence.

I used to love movies, but I had trained myself to hate them.

The short-term fun of snerking had robbed me of the capacity to see good and feel joy.

Snerking Destroys Happiness

I wasn’t just snerking about movies. I was snerking about all sorts of things. From politics to people’s hobbies to how others felt about Valentine’s Day.

I was looking for excuses to show my sneering contempt and superiority for everything, which meant that I couldn’t enjoy anything.

Because I was always looking for things to mock, I spent my time seeking out bad things, while ignoring good things. Which led me to see the world as an awful place. And to have contempt for all other people.

My depression kept getting worse,* as I was convinced everything and everyone was terrible, and I had killed my capacity for joy.

Once I kicked my internet argument addiction, I was able to cut back on the snerking. It took a long time for me to regain the ability to feel joy and see good in the world. And even longer for me to look back and realize what my snerking habit had cost me.

The No Snerking Rule is an Easy Way to Improve Your Life

Most attempts at self-improvement come with a cost. We all have a limited amount of time and energy each day. The bulk of that is spent on your job, sleep, caring for yourself, home, family, and pets, running errands, doing chores, and maybe squeezing in a few moments spent with your loved ones, relaxing, or doing the things you like.

If you spend an hour a day exercising, meditating, or working on your side-hustle, that’s an hour you can’t spend on anything else. And most people don’t have many hours to spare.

So we should look for easy wins. Ways to improve our lives and make us happier or more fulfilled that don’t consume a lot of time.

Anytime you can improve your life by not doing something instead of doing something, that’s a wonderful thing. It’s an opportunity to make yourself happier while giving you more time instead of using time up.

When you stop yourself from snerking, you give yourself the time you would have spent on the snerk, plus all the time that would have been wasted on any ensuing arguments. That’s time you can spend improving yourself, doing something charitable, earning money, or relaxing and enjoying yourself.

Any of these is a much better use of your time than training yourself to be unhappy.

The No Snerking Rule Makes Me A Better Person

When I snerked, I wasn’t only training myself to seek out what is bad in the world. I was also training myself to be cruel, contemptuous, arrogant, and dismissive.

I didn’t see other people as real-life humans with thoughts and feelings and legitimate reasons to believe what they believe. They were abstract representations of stupidity to be ridiculed.

I was destroying my capacity for kindness, compassion, curiosity, respect, and connecting with other individuals.

The same thing happened with people as with movies, but this was far more damaging. I had sacrificed all the benefits and joys of friendship and community for the brief thrill of showboating how obnoxious I could be.

Many people believe, as I once did, that certain positions are so odious that anyone who holds them is an inherently terrible person who is unworthy of kindness or respect, and deserving of insults, mockery, and cruelty.

I disagree with this, but I don’t expect to change anyone’s mind, and I won’t argue about it here.

Even if you think it’s right to express contempt toward those who hold some beliefs, surely you don’t think this about all beliefs you disagree with.

Does your rationale that justifies cruel mockery of fans of a politician you find loathsome also justify cruel mockery of fans of a TV show, sports team, or technology brand you dislike? Doubtful.

But this is how I acted. I rationalized snerking in some contexts, and built it into a habit. Which led me to snerk toward everything I disagreed with, from the most effective means of charity to fields where I wasn’t qualified to have any opinion, such as particle physics. (Those are real examples.)

I was an obnoxious jerk.

I had to break the habit of snerking so that I could treat people with respect.

Treating people with respect directly increased my happiness. And it made it much easier to make friends and find community, with more pleasant people than the ones who had been cheering on my snerk. That had an enormous effect on my happiness.

Plus, I was a better person.

Other Reasons for the No Snerking Rule

There are a few more reasons I find it important to avoid snerking. They aren’t as vital as the first two, but they’re still meaningful to me.

The No Snerking Rule Keeps Me Out of Internet Arguments

People don’t like being insulted, especially in a mocking and contemptuous way.

If I snerk at someone, they’re not going to change their mind. The most likely response is to get angry, then insult me and my ideas in retaliation.

I don’t like being insulted either, so why would I want this?

More importantly, as a recovered internet argument addict, I need to be careful to keep myself out of these situations.

The No Snerking Rule Makes Me a Better Writer

One of the Things I Wish I Knew is “There are lots of things wrong with the world. Pointing that out doesn’t make you clever. That’s just whining.”

Mocking bad things is easy. Too easy. If you want to find that, you can look pretty much anywhere on the internet.

By putting that low-hanging fruit off-limits, I force myself to come up with something more interesting to say.

The No Snerking Rule Makes Self-Helping Yourself More Helpful

The point of this blog is to provide useful tips on easy ways to improve your life and happiness.

It is not to say, “I’m better than people who believe stupid things.”

The former is worth reading. The latter is not.

Snerking is a Futile Attempt to Build Yourself Up By Tearing Others Down

Which brings me to the final problem with snerking.

I used Snerking as a quick way to get an ego boost by convincing myself I was better than others.

That was a terrible way to feel good about myself.

Ranking myself against other people was a damaging practice, because it led me to cheer others’ failures and curse their success. It made me see the rest of the world as rivals rather than allies and partners.

Hurting others does not help me.

The right way to boost my ego is to better myself and celebrate my achievements. Helping and encouraging someone is praiseworthy. Mocking them is not.

I’m not perfect. I make mistakes. I’m sure if you dig through all my old blog posts, you’ll find some examples of snerk.

But setting a hard and fast rule keeps me on track, and keeps me from rationalizing it.

Don’t boost your pride by snerking at others to prove yourself better. Better yourself to be worthy of pride.

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* To be clear, depression is a medical condition caused by internal brain chemistry. But attitude and thought patterns play a huge part in either exacerbating or alleviating the symptoms.