December 28 - Sarcasm Graham

Dear Mr. Jefferson,

Let me be the first to congratulate you on your performance from last night. It went well beyond brilliant and it would not be an overstatement in the least to call it unforgettable and bound to be legendary. Your play is always without peer, but last night you reset the bar: 3 points on 1 for 13 shooting; 0 rebounds; 6 turnovers. Absolutely amazing. It was the highlight not just of the season, but of an exemplary career. Your team is truly fortunate to count you as one of its roster.

Although eight million dollars a year is an insult to your talents, it is a testament to the depths of your magnanimity. You are not only one of the all time great NBA players, but also a saint among men. Everyone in the city should consider themselves lucky to have you not only as the franchise player of our team, but also as the face of our city.

This fan thanks you humbly for your brilliant performance, and looks forward to seeing if you can ever top yourself.

Sincerely,Greg Maddox

c/o www.sarcasmgram.com
"Sarcasm" Graham Pinto, CEO

Tina Turner's You're the Best played in the background as an animated audience surrounded the electronic message giving a standing ovation. It was a typical Sarcasm Gram: a seemingly sincere message that was twisted into a caustic missive with a biting tone by the appearance of the Sarcasm Gram logo (a smirking yellow face) and the name "Sarcasm" Graham Pinto at the bottom of the screen. By the end of 2010 Sarcasm Grams were more ubiquitous than Ecards.
As the CEO of sarcasmgram.com, Graham Pinto wanted the world to know that he stood behind his service. That's why he put his name under the web address, under the logo, and on the company's letterhead. In doing so, he became a household name along the lines of Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Steve Jobs. Graham Pinto was the very face of sarcasm.
And a very rich face at that: sarcasmgram.com netted more than 350 million dollars in 2010, and it was solely responsible for making sarcasm a global phenomenon, having launched successful Sarcasm Gram websites in 20 countries. Sarcasm was big business and to almost everyone in the world, Graham was sarcasm.
However, one side effect of being synonymous with sarcasm was that it was impossible for Graham to give anyone a genuine compliment, word of thanks, gesture of appreciation, or offer of condolence. Everyone always thought he was being sarcastic.
And that included his eleven year old daughter, Michelle.
Throughout her childhood, she suspected and gradually became wise to the fact that there was a big (sar)chasm between what her father said and how people perceived it. The words that came out of his mouth always seemed very nice, but they seemed to put the people who heard them in a bad mood.
When she found out what his job was--spreading sarcasm around the world--she became unable to believe any compliments he gave her, especially potentially backhanded ones like "Your shooting style is so unique" and "What an interesting outfit you have on today" and "Those new shoes are so . . . you!" The more she suspected his sincerity, the more adversely it affected her self esteem.
Which in turn killed Graham. He loved his daughter and thought the world of her. He hated the idea that his genuinely kind words were messing with his daughter's mind, especially as she was on the cusp of the particularly awkward and stressful teenage years.
And so he retired. He sold sarcasmgram.com and walked away. He walked so far away from sarcasm, in fact, that he switched teams, becoming a ghost writer for Hallmark, churning out some of the most well received greeting cards in the company's history.
However, when it was revealed that Sarcasm Graham was the man behind the new cards, there was an uproar. Hundreds of thousands of people suddenly felt that the cards they'd received from family, friends, and loved ones were meant sarcastically. There was a class action lawsuit that destroyed the company. Less than a year after he started working there, Hallmark filed for bankruptcy.
It soon became clear to Graham that he was the negativity Midas. And so, accepting that that was the impact he was going to have on the world, he went back to work as a lobbyist, writing opinion papers for industries to which he was opposed.
Big Tobacco enthusiastically hired him, for he was one of the top writers in any industry and they knew he would do a good job for them. The only condition was that he had to remain behind the scenes. Nobody could know that Sarcasm Graham had become the Voice of Big Tobacco.
And so he went to work, writing countless articles trumpeting various tobacco companies' contributions to the environment, education, etc., all the while injecting tiny little clues about the identity of the writer into the reports and papers.
And his efforts worked quite well for Big Tobacco and the other industries he went to work for--until the little clues about his identity he left out began to accumulate and the media discovered that Big Tobacco's PR blitz was captained by none other than Sarcasm Graham. The fallout was massive and Big Tobacco took a huge PR hit. Suddenly, slogans like "Phillip Morris really cares." and "RJR Reynolds is really interested in what you think." and "Phillip Morris knows that children are our most valuable resource." were dripping with sarcasm. People still smoked, but major damage had been done.
As it was in the other industries he "went to work for": Big Oil, Big Alcohol, and various weapons manufacturers.
So much so that they stopped hiring him, but by then he'd long since made well more than enough to retire on comfortably. And so he did, devoting the rest of his life to trying to earn (back) the trust of those he cared about the most.