Why is the /s necessary here as well?
One of my most hated things in the dying days of Reddit is people having to put the /s because of all the mass down voting from users that didn't get a post was a joke.
When I came here it seemed that wasn't the case but I've noticed over the last month a lot of users using it or having -28 points for an off the cuff comment.
I might be just be a bit too bothered by the need to use it.
The voting behaviour around here is .. interesting.
As for the /s, that's because of how humans communicate. Most of our context cues are subliminal, facial expression, tone of voice, body language, eye movement, etc. These account for the bulk of the actual message.
In text based communication like this, those cues are missing entirely. We use emojis and smiley face brackets to give a clue to what is going on.
Then there's the language barrier, people come from different countries with different languages, but also different cultural ideas of what's funny and what isn't. You can tell when you start looking into swearing for example. The Dutch hurl contagious diseases at each other, the Italians diss each others mother, Australians use body parts.
Sarcasm is a special form of interaction, straddling truth and disbelief in some way. It's not universally recognised in the same way since it often triggers off cultural beliefs which vary across the world.
So, to bring all that together, the simple "/s" shows the reader that sarcasm is intended in a more or less universal way. Of course that too has a cultural impact, but that's a rabbit hole I'm not going down today.
Also, I'd venture to guess that a higher concentration of neurospicy individuals exist here than other forums, which may make markup of nonverbal communication more regular.
Just a hunch though.
Completely agree. First of all the voting behaviour. To me it looks completely like a score if a specific opinion is popular. I see lots of valid arguments (in friendly words) against a popular opinion getting downvoted. Urban legends getting upvoted while the correct answer has 2 upvotes... Things that are the first thing that comes to mind after reading the headline, but not part of the article at all getting a good amount of upvotes...
And with the sarcasm, innuendo, emotions, playing devils advocate... It's a long tradition on the internet to add hints to the text to make that clear. It's not mandatory in any way, but the subtext, verbal clues and facial expressions are definitely missing. Reddit folks have their own jargon with the '/s' etc. Other people use emojis. But even before emojis were a thing, people added ;-) :'-) or XD or other clues.
Sarcasm just doesn't work that well in text comments and it never has.
I'm not liking the voting system so far on lemmy. I've seen too many comments downvoted just because people disagree with the poster's opinion and not because they are trolling or off topic.
I've see it happen on reddit of course but it seems more prevalent here in the short time I've been using it.
/s is a very old internet thing, not a reddit thing. It can be hard to discern jokes on the internet because we don't know you and we can't hear your tone.
And lately some of those "jokes" are basically indistinguishable from serious people that are truely piece of shit humans. The "it's a joke" to save face after the backlash has been abused far too much.
Or, get this, one could just make good jokes.
Here you are addressing people from all over the world : they have different cultures, backgrounds, perspectives ... and some of us didn't have time to take our first coffee before reading your writings !
So, be indulgent and take this smallest of efforts to add this "/s” please. I for one will be thankful 😌
Great point
That's on you. /s is for cowards and always has been.
/s just in case. plz don't downvote because that's something I definitely care about ...
It's not really the downvoting that's the whole reason, I also want people to understand and enjoy the joke. If I make a joke, and I knowingly leave an /s off, then I'm accepting that part of the audience won't get it, and if I'm just trying to be a dick about it and the only person intended to laugh is me, then okay, but I like to make other people laugh and be happy, so /s it is.
It's clumsy, sure, but I'd rather be clumsy than come across as an ass or not make any sense.
I feel like that /s was sarcastic...
THE /S IS ALWAYS NECESSARY
I don't know how anyone could live through the last decade and not see how important it is to denote when you're being sarcastic. "It ruins the joke" is preferable over it ruins society. Without the S idiots will read what you wrote and think there's people out there who actually support their idiotic ideas
I'm telling you EWOKS ARE REAL, PEOPLE
There are too many idiots around to assume sarcasm . (Definition of idiot may differ depending on political affinity)
Tone indicators like /s are vital for neurodivergent people who struggle with understanding people's intentions, especially over text.
In addition, you probably underestimate the amount of miscommunication that happens over the internet due to strangers communicating with each other without any tone indicators at all.
Yeah I definitely didn't consider that thanks
Tone indicators like /s and even smilies are great for text-based communication. It is extremely easy to misinterpret intent in text as there are no body language or auditory signals to provide context. As someone else stated already, use of tone indicators is good communication, making certain that one's intent is clearly defined. This is especially helpful for ESL and neurodivergent people who may have increased challenges in ascertaining implicit meaning in a statement or joke.
For every completely unhinged and stupid statement, there surely is someone who believes it.
Now, you see, if we didn't put /s behind these posts, it would be impossible to tell whether we're joking, or whether whoever writes the comment is actually that stupid. That's just how it is on the internet.
I don't want to read shitty opinions, whether they're real or 'sarcastic'. If you write a shitty right-wing opinion, and suffix it with a /s, it still reads as a shitty right-wing opinion.
You're angry about people being good communicators?
Not angry, as commented people have raised good points for it's use then the thread seems to have been nuked and so convo stopped which is a shame.
Idk I sometimes I write a comment thinking no one would take it seriously, but I read it and it's something a troll would try to put through as genuine. Lemmy is overall left leaning and a bit of a hivemind but has diverse perspectives and passionate voting so I need to put the s in those cases to be clear.
In real life you set sarcasm with the tone of voice. The s marker is the prompt to read the comment back again in that voice.
Adding the /s is also about accessibility and inclusion since written sarcasm is much harder to read and especially difficult for neurodiverse people.
I can imagine that the percentage of ND reddit and lemmy user are higher than in the general population.
So by refusing to use /s you are actually cutting a big part of lemmy users out of the conversation.
People downvote reflexively here. Joke or no joke. S or no S. It's getting a downvote.
I don't realize I'm being sarcastic until someone is offended. And then I tell them that I just figured out I was being sarcastic and they should have known before I knew. So now I preemptively put a /s at the end of every comment.
Edit: I forgot this /s
Downvote me all you want, but for the life of me, I never understood what this meant. Even when reading your post, I'm still confused about it.
And don't get me started on all the other "letters that succeed a slash" that I have no idea what they mean.
I'm basically f***ing stupid.
They're all tone indicators, since you can't communicate voice tone over text.
/s stands for sarcasm, sometimes /srs is used for serious, I'm not too sure what the others stand for but those are the most frequently used from what I've seen
/jk is "just kidding"
Got it
It is not. Just stop caring about fake internet points.
Here it’s honestly a lot more rough to have differing opinions. Too many are on the same wave length in a lot of different areas. There’s not a lot of grey area either.
Because some people are so illiterate they can't understand context clues even in written form where you have FOREVER to think about it and they NEED that stupid letter S at the end in order to go "ooooooooh ok thank god someone told me it was a joke, I was unable to think for myself and recognize it on my own."
Don't use your "neurodivergence" as an excuse to rationalize why you shouldn't think about things, it's actually sickening to see people falling into that belief.
I refuse to use. Fuck 'em.
No one's going to force you. Just don't REEEEE out when someone takes your super obvious sarcasm seriously.
/s needs to die
