• sauerkrautsaul@lemmus.org
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        7 hours ago

        I cannot believe how quickly its transpired that people can’t pick up on very, very obvious sarcasm. I genuinely can’t.

        The number of homeless children has increased by 50% n 6 months.

        “We should grind them up and feed them to the Rottweilers guarding the multi-billionaire’s properties so they can save money on dog food and help create more jobs!”

        “You WHAT?!!? These are CHILDREN!!”

        the /s wasn’t a thing pre covid. I dont get it,

        • derek@infosec.pub
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          6 hours ago

          Tone Indicators (wikipedia.com) have been around for a long time.

          The syntax of modern tone indicators stems from /s, which has long been used on the internet to denote sarcasm.[4] This symbol is an abbreviated version of the earlier /sarcasm, itself a simplification of </sarcasm>,[5] the form of a humorous XML closing tag marking the end of a “sarcasm” block, and therefore placed at the end of a sarcastic passage.

          Just because one hasn’t been exposed to a concept doesn’t make it new. :)

        • mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          6 hours ago

          It’s just Poe’s Law in action. It’s impossible to create satire that is too extreme, because there will always be someone who believes it to be a genuine post. The law was originally coined to refer to fundamentalist Christians, but was later expanded to encompass any kind of satire or sarcasm in online text.

        • faythofdragons@slrpnk.net
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          5 hours ago

          Without the voice inflection and body language of personal communication these are easily misinterpreted. A sideways smile, :-), has become widely accepted on the net as an indication that “I’m only kidding”. If you submit a satiric item without this symbol, no matter how obvious the satire is to you, do not be surprised if people take it seriously.
          Jerry Schwartz, 1983, Usenet

        • whelk@retrolemmy.com
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          6 hours ago

          I think this is the reason. With the mass de-masking in recent years and people saying the things out loud that they’d previously just keep to themselves, it’s become more difficult to tell if people are being sarcastic or just are genuinely hateful and cruel.

          I hate that this feels like the reason, but it does. I’ve lost a lot of people that I used to count as respected friends and peers.