Thanksgiving brings with it the compulsory advice and opinion pieces about how to manage uncomfortable conversations, audacious behavior, and embarrassing reminiscence that so often come with large family gatherings. However, these columns leave out a highly effective and likely widespread coping mechanism: the snarky text.

The snarky text is a surreptitiously crafted message in which the sender factually reports on the ongoings around them and accompanies the report with pithy commentary in written or pictoral form. Gifs are particularly effective. Snarky texts work best when the recipient is adequately primed about the dynamics in which the sender is ensconced. Recipients may be remote, or for an added layer of complexity, may be in the same location as the sender.  

For example, when your grandmother’s “friend” makes erotically suggestive statements while deciding which cut of the turkey he wants, you can send your favorite cousin, sitting across the table, this:

Or when your family coalesces to comment on your weight and food choices, you can send this to your best friend across the country:

“Oh good. I hoped everyone would spend 45 minutes noticing my vegetarianism and its ill effects upon my body.”

The snarky text is a unique communicative tool. It  not only provides an outlet for in-the-moment frustrations, thus neutralizing the experience of your great aunt reminding you of your withering reproductive system, but also turns bad experiences into good ones. Those uncomfortable or painful moments become fodder for your account. The worse the better, really. When a relative proclaims we must “make our country great again!!” it is  joyful for you in its potential for documentation. Who should I tell, and in what expressive form!? You ask yourself.

Of course, families are not always terrible. For the record, my family is pretty unterrible. But in general, people are annoying and life can be trying. The snarky text puts a giggle into those difficult moments.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Jenny Davis is on Twitter @Jenny_L_Davis