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It's weird to me how the first two replies to this comment completely missed the sarcasm.

Do we need to start using the "/s" tag here like became necessary on reddit? I don't like the thought, but maybe it's a different issue in this case-- more of a non-native-English or on-the-spectrum thing than an inexperienced teenager thing? I hope so.




Being English-as-in-UK I often run into situations where my dry/sarcastic humour completely fails to be clear to USians.

Then again from the UK POV the leftpondians barely count as native English speakers anyway ;)


Yet you'll find sources that claim spoken American English is closer to historical British English, because of some aspects like rhoticity. [1]

[1] https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20180207-how-americans-p...


Those are all claims about the accent (my understanding of said claims is basically "sounds reasonable but also I have no idea what I'm talking about").

I was more thinking about the words/grammar/idiom etc.

(also as a Lancastrian I find e.g. Deep Somerset barely comprehensible, especially when the speaker is a few pints in, but their wording is still usually closer to mine than the USians' is)


Hmm. As a born Britisher I used to have this attitude until I read 'Mother Tongue' by Bill Bryson. He's an American who moved to the UK and has a good handle on the differences between American and British english.


(So I guess "Rightpondia" would be Airstrip One?)


We Have Always Been At War With Eurasia.


So strange. As a non-brit, every comment I read uses John Oliver or Diane Morgan as an internal monologue and is incredibly witty and sarcastic.

To be fair, I'm probably less informed for doing so.


You would likely be better with, say, Ian Hislop for me in terms of sarcasm, though while he's definitely a wit, no matter how hard I try I only ever seem to get half way.


Any time one is tempted to post a sarcastic comment, it's good to re-read Poe's law[0] first. It does in fact always apply when posting on the internet.

[0]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law


I’m afraid that the risk of failing to understand my sarcasm is one my readers will have to take, unaided by sarctags and helpful expositions


What you seem to be missing is that people are reading your post in a non-sarcastic, non-ironic manner and agreeing with it. As Poe's law points out, that will always be the case.

Poe's law speaks to the size of the population on the internet and of the range of viewpoints it hosts as a result.


I am not OP; my simple point is that I don’t really care how “people” interpret my comments, and I will continue to write for those who _are_ clever enough to comprehend my intent (which one might imagine most people on this forum to be).


/s is would be more of an tone indicator for those who struggle to understand word communication portrayed by text.

In this case understanding the context of being sarcasm. It's annoying as you now have messages ending in /hj /lh.

Discord especially where the audience is young; but as we now cater to a world audience of those with disabilities and those without where do you tow the line?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tone_indicator


> It's weird to me how [...]

Counterpoint, it's weird to me to be surprised to encounter a problem when you knowingly avoid preventing that problem.




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