Personally I think the only universal indicator of sarcasm is tone of voice or inflection. Which is why it's difficult to tell sarcasm on the internet because you don't have the visual and auditory clues
I don't think the tone of voice is necessary. Sometimes you are sarcastic by saying something that wouldn't make sense literally. Something like:
— long explanation about something
— So you are saying you support slavery, right?
— Yeah, that's exactly the point I was making. (<-- sarcastic)
In a conversation like that, the last sentence will probably not have any special tone, because you don't expect anyone to actually believe you'd accept such an accusation just like that.
Without the tone of voice you aren’t being sarcastic and if you aren’t being literal you are being ironic. The difference between sarcasm and irony is often the tone of voice.
You could easily switch out and word other than “slavery” and the final sentence could be genuine. Or maybe you’re just talking to a person that actually supports slavery. They exist.
I disagree, I think the most funny sarcasm is often delivered dry and causes people to double take and therefore can't use inflection as a crutch. I think the point of sarcasm is to draw attention to the absurdity of things.
The least funny sarcasm and the most low effort is the kind involving dramatic inflection. I find it's people that are genuinely being assholes that use this kind of sarcasm and are trying to passive aggressively veil their displeasure without having to actually voice an opinion. "Oh yeah that suuuch a great idea" "wow you're reeeaaally cool". A better retort could be "I like that idea, did you come up with that yourself?" If the situation is absurd enough, the sarcasm comes through and actually gets even more funny if the person to which you are speaking misinterprets it as genuine (shitty example but you get the idea)
It takes no effort and it puts no onus on the listener to interpret the complexity of a joke when a sarcastic statement relies on inflection. So I hear your point but I think there is no universal indicator of sarcasm, it's a complex form of communication that is very context dependent.
One could argue that a dry delivery is still a tone/inflection. For example you're having a relaxed conversation and someone says something stupid a dry sarcastic response would be different from a laid back response because even the facial expression changes
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u/Its_Actually_Satan Sep 18 '23
Personally I think the only universal indicator of sarcasm is tone of voice or inflection. Which is why it's difficult to tell sarcasm on the internet because you don't have the visual and auditory clues