• 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