So, I was rewatching Star Trek over the weekend, and it struck me for the first time what an incredibly sarcastic movie it is. In an era dominated by snark, a style of commentary that involves the same kinds of take-downs as sarcasm, but with much less emotional investment, it’s actually a bit odd to see a movie so full of biting sarcasm, drawn from a well of deep engagement. From the angry “live long and prosper,” the young Spock bites off at the Vulcan Science Academy admissions panel that’s just dismissed his human heritage, to the “enlighten me,” Kirk spits at Spock during his academy trial the movie’s full of angry, funny people. I think it’s a characterization tool that works remarkably well for the group of ambitious, insecure characters the movie throws together.

It’s possible that sarcasm is just a less successful means of emotional distance and disguise than snark is, but it’s also more interesting to watch on screen. Making fun of things for the sake of making fun of things is fun in conversation, particularly if said conversation revolves around light one-upsmanship, or say, writing on the internet. But sarcasm’s far more engaging to watch on screen, because it’s an underused way of signaling character emotion and rawness. Not everything has to be tears, or anger, or passionate declaration. Misdirection, failed or successful, and caginess are just as effective, and often more revealing.

I’ve written in the past about how frustrating I find the fact that The Social Network purports to tell us something revealing and important about Facebook’s founders, despite the fact that it’s based on fictionalized source material. Unsurprisingly, the founders turn out to find that frustrating as well. The actual events that they’re arguing over including in the movie—including a “mostly made up” scene involving bare breasts and strippers—aren’t that germane to understanding Facebook’s nature and development, but the fact that they’re arguing over them is.

The internal logic the Facebook founders guide their personal lives and their business by is fascinating, and contradictory. To some extent, there’s a free-market element to this all. Facebook users are given the tools to humiliate themselves, but there’s certainly no requirement that they do so. At the same time, even discretion isn’t enough to ensure that your privacy will be protected, given the company’s internal controls, or lack thereof. The founders seem to largely operate on principals of self-protection; they abide by their own internal rules. But they also seem to dislike it when other people force them to live by the second part of the functional rules that govern their product: there’s only so far you can lock up information. The debate might be different if the movie was based on credible source material, instead of a book so speculative that it gives Zuckerberg & Co. an excuse to cast doubt on true events as well as falsified or misemphasized ones. But it’s still an intriguing one. If you build a big chunk of the world, you tend to get stuck living in it.

Or must Vegas residencies be good financially for artists, but less than awesome quality of life-wise? If you’re going to be rich and famous and on tour, one of the benefits has to be the variety. And if one place is going to be your home base, anywhere near the strip on Vegas has to be awfully unpleasant. (That may just be my bias speaking, I didn’t particularly like Vegas when I went there for the first and only time last June, although seeing a Cirque show was rather fun and Mario Batali and Tom Colicchio sure run them a pair of fine dining establishments). And most importantly, perhaps, you’re committing to years with a shifting audience that only wants the most familiar of you, rather than stuff you liked but that didn’t take off, or new material you’re working on; if they’ve come there, and paid as much as Vegas shows cost, they want only your greatest hits. I can’t imagine Madonna ever taking one, or really any other artist who is still recording and promoting new material.

I wrote about how psyched I am for Travis Barker’s solo album.