In keeping with echoic reminder theory, both the availability of a victim and the polarity of the counterfactual statement affected the way in which counterfactual statements were interpreted. When such statements could be referred to an explicit victim, they were judged to be sarcastic more often than when they could not be (44% vs. 28%, respectively). Positive statements about negative events (e.g., saying "Nice day!" during a storm) were judged to be sarcastic more often than negative statements about positive events (e.g., "What a terrible day!" uttered in bright sunshine): 39% versus 32%, respectively. However, the influence of an explicit victim was not reliably greater for negative remarks, which suggests that people are likely to judge a remark as sarcastic whenever it is obviously false to both speaker and listener, even when that remark has no explicit victim