India’s second most followed meme page in Facebook – Sadcasm – is an exemplary story of how an obscure group of individuals – among them being Aditya Saini and Gaurav Shukla – stroke gold by never giving up. The now meme producer giant approaches a sheer 20 million followers! Let us go deep into the roots of the name – Sarcasm – to see if any of its underlying meanings have a magical formula of success.
Sadcasm = Sad + ??
The first piece of the puzzle – “Sad” – is no mystery. It connotes sadness. In an era where depression is widespread and people are more and more aware of it, the “sad” part of “Sadcasm” seems to fit right in with the trend of venting your miseries online. “When, after a long and tiring day, we see relatable and heart-wrenching posts on social media, we are bound to feel something and relate to the posts,” explains Gaurav Shukla.
And yet, aren’t typical witty posts on Facebook supposed to be fun and jovial and cheerful? Isn’t the core of such content to do with a funny and amusing collage of pictures with funny and amusing captions? Gaurav is a groundbreaker, as he says, “We wanted to try a bit different route with Sadcasm. It’s no secret. We were desperate! Desperate after past failed business attempts.”
But it is not that Sadcasm only provides sad content. Of course, there are a fair share of such material to be appropriate with the page name. However, a lot of posts are stereotypical content too, with an added flavor of realism incorporating sad reality. In other words, the posts serve two-fold functions: one is to smack of hilarious jovial fun characterised by memes, and also having sad undertones. For example, a Sadcasm post could poke fun at bachelors while at the same time drawing some pity for and also from the singles.
So what about the “casm” part?
One guess would be that the name Sadcasm is a witty derivative of “sarcasm,” which means to poke fun by not really meaning what is said. However, Sadcasm, as already mentioned, employs sad undertones in conjunction with jovial humor.
Aditya Saini provides another clever root source of the word: “I am no biologist, but doesn’t Sadcasm remind you of cytoplasm and ectoplasm and all that cellular stuff? These things protect the cell nucleus. Symbolically, our company is like that. Just through posting interesting and witty posts, we provide people a cathartic platform to relieve their stress.” We may not all understand the big words he says, but we get the point.
With etymology as deep and amusing as Sadcasm’s, it is no wonder that it attained success; the name itself carries deep underlying meaning. The revolutionary company’s stock is already on a high level, with collaborations with brands such as Ola Cabs, Monster Jobs India, Telstra, Kwid. The future looks to be even more promising as there are talks about incorporating even more sponsors to extend reach. We can only stay tuned to see how Sadcasm evolves even to higher heights.
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