My view of irony is to do with intention. If an ironic remark is intended as a put down, it becomes sarcasm. Even the wink of an eye cannot retrieve the way that the intention "leaks out".

I love irony and do often hover on the edge between sarcasm and irony, sometimes getting it wrong, sometimes being misinterpreted. The easiest laugh to get with irony is where the butt of the joke is yourself, people feel that they are laughing with you not against someone else. The next problem is - what is putting yourself down all the time doing to you? I suspect the the road to perfection is a road to a world with very little humour.

The discussion a while ago on this board was that all jokes have a butt except puns which are, therefore by definition, not jokes. The reason that it is hard to get a laugh, rather than a groan, out of a pun is that there is no-one to laugh at.

I suppose that my bottom line is that there is very little difference between irony and sarcasm, it is to do with what is acceptable in the culture at the time. Irony is the soft end of sarcasm.