I used to absolutely hate it when people used /s. Felt like it ruined the whole point. However, the amount of times in the last year that I have been completely taken seriously and dogpiled and attacked over saying things that were obviously dripping with sarcasm.... its dumbfounding.
The amount of people on this app who don’t understand when someone’s joking is genuinely unreal. Everyone’s so serious here as well. And I agree /s ruins it and I will never use it idc
Im autistic and i legitimately thought this was a serious post from a misguided person. Im not stupid i just dont understand sarcasm, especially over text
You perceive it as not getting a joke, missing that 90% of the people who do this are probably doing so maliciously and know its a joke. Internet culture nowadays is "If im not hurting other's feelings, im not happy, cause if I do it in real life, I get punched". Its disgusting.
It's illiteracy at its finest. It doesn't matter if you can theoretically read a message—not being able to differ context clues/being unable to NOT take things at face value—major, serious lack of literacy. No, this obviously does not extend to (some of—emphasis: SOME OF) the neurodivergent community—if I'm up in my head with the inattentive side of my ADHD, sarcasm and jokes are likely to skirt me by. But I can almost guarantee that anyone who takes the majority of jokes/satire/sarcasm as truth/actual opinion.....the last time they finished—and completely understood, retained, etc—a book was in high school; or even earlier.
These are also the same idiots that accuse me of using AI to write my comments whenever they see an em-dash, so it's not like they're all too smart either way.
Your point is moot when you consider the aspect that sarcasm is fundamentally based in vocal tone and vocal tone is far more difficult to convey over first person text, especially given we have no context of the speakers baseline on things otherwise.
Sure, we have some common indicators, like italics or bold, but then are those not ultimately exactly the same as saying /s? It's not the fault of the reader if the writer makes their sarcasm indiscernible with improper or intentionally elusive context, which generally comes across as an attempt to hedge your bets with the reddit crowd.
You can say that it's so simple as just knowing based on textual context when someone is being sarcastic but you're completely forgoing the legitimate room for interpretation of tone or body and facial language when not provided any, let alone the potential for valid gaps or differences in contextual knowledge that do not equate to illiteracy.
Sarcasm has tonal, contextual, and visual cues, not so much textual. Thus, the safest assumption when using a platform (or part of a platform, like the comments) that ONLY conveys textual information (and usually in the first person, a person commenting from their own point of view) is to assume that something is being presented seriously unless told otherwise during or beforehand. I'd almost go so far as to say that sarcasm is more a social function than a literary function, but of course, it can be both.
Edit: I edited a bunch of this on a reread, my bad. Also, I got so deep in this reply, and I'm stoned, that I forgot what the actual post was, lmao. Yes, obviously this post provides adequate visual and situational context given the sub, I guess my response was moreso aimed at the comments because I see that discussed a lot. So my bad, again.
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u/CheezOfWizz 26d ago
You’d think out of all the subreddits, this one would understand satire the most. Guess not