Right, but isn’t that something we effectively do anyway, with tone of voice and body language?
And if someone doesn’t pick up on our sarcasm in person, do we just let them go on thinking we believe something we actually don’t?
No. We do go “I was being sarcastic” and then they burst out laughing and go “oh damn, you got me for a second there haha”.
We announce our sarcasm in a variety of ways regardless of the setting. The point of making it unmissable online, is that if you don’t, there will be fraction of people who walk away having misinterpreted what you were saying. In person we can make sure that doesn’t happen, online in a public forum, not so much.
And since when is explaining a joke to someone who doesn’t get it, a bad thing? Are you seriously arguing that ruining the joke (whether it is even ruined in the first place is debatable, imo) is too much to trade in for helping people understand?
I’ve met people who say things that should have a sarcastic inflection - without the inflection.
Yes, it’s very hard to understand if they’re joking and yes, we sometimes have to ask them if they’re kidding, but not all the time. Some things are so absurd, so outlandish, phrased in such a way that explicitly explaining it was a joke can ruin the joke. Yes, clear communication in some instances should take priority over the joke in cases where being misunderstood as serious would have consequences, social or otherwise.
But I really don’t think anyone here reasonably believed OP valued a phone with a ten year lifespan over the life of a child, nor that we should be using a foreign country as a waste dump until they’re ‘at capacity’. I think at some point you have to make the determination that something is so absurd that even if you can’t tell it’s sarcasm, you should be able to tell they’re not serious.
Agreed, but again, let’s not pretend r/fuckthes has a point in it being dumb and unnecessary.
Using it removes even the slightest room for misinterpretation. That is always a good thing.
A large majority of the internet is dumb and unnecessary.
Jokes often rely on you being able to figure them out without explicit explanation, giving room for misinterpretation.
Removing the potential for misinterpretation is not always a good thing.
And this still doesn’t account for the nutcases that say this stuff, actually believing it, and then get showered with validation because the rest of us assume it is sarcasm.
Edit: whether someone is being “too unreasonable to be serious” is unfortunately no longer a reliable way to tell what someone is actually trying to say.
