Your Insect Inflection

Your Insect Reflection Inflection
(Name that show, and if you do know the show, then you probably get how it applies to my post. If not, bear with me.)

You know how someone can make you feel stupid not with their words, but by the tone of their voice? They don't actually say that you're stupid, but their voice has that inflection that seems to say, "You're a big stupid dummy head." I bet you have an image of a person in your head right now. I know a few people like this.

One of these mean people could be literally saying, (this is a "for example" not a real situation) "You spend all your time counting calories," but the subtle message, heard only by the trained listener really says, "You spend all your stupid time counting stupid calories, and it's such a waste of time. I could never do that so therefore it is stupid." 

Roswell's Bella and Edward. I mean Max and Liz.

Twilight's Bella and Edward.

But how do you call someone on this? The tone of a person's voice wouldn't hold up in court. If you tried to call someone out on their tone, the response is usually denial anyway. So my defensive response tends to be "snark for snark". Kinda like how I not-so-secretly despise Stephenie Meyer for her break out fame. I usually mask my irritation with flippant comments about her glittery vampires and characters ripped off from Roswell, a show that used to air on the CW about a teenage girl saved by a teenage Alien boy with beautiful hair and abs like an EXTRA-terrestrial. It's chock full of sophomoric swoonage. But the truth is I am just jealous of Stephenie's success.
I'm sorry Stephenie Meyer. You are [long sigh] a good writer. I've read almost all of your books, and they are good. (Except for the Book 4 of the Twilight series.) Geez, I'm terrible at apologies.

The point is I hate that I return "snark for snark". And I'm not doing it anymore.

Know this, mean-toned people of the world, I'm on to you. And from now on, when you say regular things snarkily, like "You spend all your time counting calories," all I hear is...
"You are skinnier than me now and I'm bitter, and since I have no will power, no consistent desire to change my habits, I'll simply mock the fact that you are successful doing it."

Wait. Is this whole post falling back on my "snark for snark" philosophy? Dang it. Well then after this post, I'm not doing it anymore.  

Mean people suck. And I don't wanna be one.