Asklemmy

As a person in a world where some people honestly believe crazy things like that the Earth is flat, it’s entirely reasonable for non-disabled people to have trouble telling sarcasm from a genuine reply too! Some time ago, a long screed on why the Earth is flat would be taken as sarcasm because it’s so outlandish, but nowadays I need the /s tag to determine whether you’re joking or if you’re a flat-Earther genuinely holding this belief. Remember Poe’s Law (warning for TVTropes link): satire of extreme views becomes indistinguishable from genuinely holding extreme views.

As an autistic person, I will admit that I can usually pick up on sarcasm, both in real life and online. But a good deal of us struggle with that, so it’s disheartening to see people calling others idiots for needing an /s tag. And I’m sure most people who can usually detect sarcasm have still encountered situations where it’s ambiguous. Clarification is always nice.

If I interpret a post as sarcastic, the addition or omission of an /s does nothing for me. Doesn’t make it less funny if I already knew it was sarcastic. I guess I’ll personally never see how including the /s makes it less funny, but given so many attest to it as a reason why they won’t use /s I figure it’s a real phenomenon.

I don’t use /s unless I think it might be ambiguous to most people as to whether I am being sarcastic or not. I’m fine with people who do use it and don’t use it. My only objection is to passing judgment on those who want an /s or use one. Some people are disabled. Some people are learning English as a second language. Some peoples’ sarcasm is incredibly ambiguous. Some people rely on tone of voice, body language, and context to determine sarcasm; and we lose the first two in online communication. Sometimes the context you post in is not enough to make it clear you are being sarcastic. People who use /s may have these people in mind, and prefer being clear to potentially being misunderstood. Not sure how clarifying your intention is an indicator of any kind of bad trait, such as cowardice. At most, I’ll it means you aren’t well-versed enough in communication or English to let your words speak for themselves without an explicit statement of intent.