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Author ties the rise of ‘snark’ to the Web

David Denby isn’t a prude. The film critic and author likes “incessant profanity,” “trash talk” and “any kind of satire.”

But he hates snark, the kind of “snarking insult” or bullying ridicule rampant in today’s world, especially on the Internet.

Snark practitioners, according to Denby’s new book, “Snark: It’s Mean, It’s Personal, and It’s Ruining Our Conversation” (Simon & Schuster, 122 pp., $15.95), include the media Web site Gawker, celebrity blogger Perez Hilton and “New York Times” op-ed columnist Maureen Dowd, who gets her own chapter.

Denby, in a phone interview, defines snark as “the knowing nasty tone, the cheap shot.” He writes that this staple of high school life is “spreading like pinkeye. In a media society, snark is an easy way of seeming smart.”

Even mainstream media are embracing snark. “Baby Boomers want to stay young forever. The worst thing is to be seen as out of it. And old media is terrified of losing its audience,” says Denby, 65, film critic for “The New Yorker ”and author of “Great Books” and “American Sucker.”

So what’s wrong with snark?

“It’s a critique of style, it’s about grace and acting in classier ways,” Denby says. “I want people to write better and read better and look at better movies.”

The problem, he says, is that “snark cheapens talent into celebrity. It’s “only interested in personality and gossip. Everything becomes personalized.”

He says snark has even influenced history: “Al Gore’s defeat is snark’s greatest victory and greatest defeat,” says Denby, who thinks Dowd’s columns mocking Gore played a part in his defeat in the 2000 presidential race.

“Certainly malice is as normal as kindness is to human beings,” Denby says, but “20 years ago, a nasty smear on Page Six would disappear.” But with Google, “it’s there forever.”

What Denby calls snark, Perez Hilton, 30, defends as honesty.

A blogger since 2004 and author of “Red Carpet Suicide: A Survival Guide on Keeping Up With the Hiltons” (Celebra, $24.95), Hilton says he “couldn’t care less” that Denby describes his Web site (perezhilton.com) as “coarse, invasive, obsessional.”

“To me, snark is a word predominantly used by snobby people,” Hilton says, “and I don’t consider myself snobby. I’m a blogger for the people and of the people. If I’m going to diss you, I’m going to diss you because a lot of people think the same thing.”