"Sarcasm is usually the last refuge of modest and chaste-souled people when the privacy of their soul is coarsely and intrusively invaded."
F. M. Dostoyevsky
The Frustrated CFO Comment: As screwed up the world already was in the 19th century, it still retained some idealism, innocence, and purity of thought that is almost entirely destroyed in our post-post-modernist times. According to Fyodor Mikhailovich, then sarcasm was the last resort of a decent intellectual who couldn't take it anymore. Nowadays, practically everyone everywhere speak in sarcastic formulas. And maybe it is because people use sarcasm as a defense mechanism to shield their vulnerability, but I am more inclined to agree with one trustworthy social critic I personally know: She says that the pervasive sarcasm has replaced the last traces of genuineness the humanity kept shedding for the last 150 years. At this point, everything is so fake, sarcasm is the only manner of communication we are capable of employing. And that's why so frequently we have to reconfirm, "I meant what I said," especially if we are expressing something rare: gratitude, modesty, humility, appreciation.