Yet another foreign national who has made his home in Malta has realised (too late) that we really don’t know how to handle irony.

Andreas Moser wrote this blog  when a bomb exploded in Hamrun prior to him moving here last November. At the time, hardly any Maltese people had read it. But today Mr Moser made the “mistake” of drawing attention to what he had written by posting a link to his blog under the Times of Malta online story of last night’s murder in Marsascala.

Now, not only has all hell predictably broken loose on the TOM comments section, but  his blog post has been flooded with vicious, angry comments telling him to go back home ( which he answered disarmingly with, “Why?”).

What is with this Maltese inability to recognise something which is obviously written tongue-in-cheek? Everything is taken literally and at face value, and we get all hot and bothered about it, failing to understand that it’s meant to be humorous. I often find this on FB when I write something and the occasional person takes me literally, which means I have to resort to putting some kind of smiley icon to indicate that I’m joking.  Which kind of kills the effect, if you know what I mean. (Luckily most of my friends are on the same wavelength so this does not happen too often).

And when the humour is directed at us as a people, oh my God look out! Remember that Dutch commercial about the Maltese football team and their abysmal results, and what a furore that caused?  We really, really need to lighten about our own cultural identity and not get so agitated if others poke harmless fun at us.

But there is hope: I find that many of the younger generation are better at “getting” sarcasm and irony and I think this is thanks to the fact that they have been exposed to different kinds of international humour.

Meanwhile I hope Andreas Moser is not too put off by all the insults. At least he received a lot of sympathy from other ex-pats. My favourite was this one by a certain Hendrik Huiskamp

Moser, Maltese people and sarcasm do not go together very well. Apart from that. They are awesome :-).