Banjooie
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Alright. I keep hearing about how difficult it is to figure out sarcasm over text form, whether it be here or anywhere else, and my god, it's not particularly difficult. (For instance, whenever my lips are moving.)

But in all seriousness, if you're really desperate to determine this sort of thing with relative accuracy, this seemingly simple guide will probably nail it about 80-90% of the time, and you'll probably get /away/ with it even if they aren't, because we live in sardonic, snarky times on these wild days of blogging.

Evaluate a statement, to start off with.

'Daikatana is the /best game ever/!'

Reading that statement, it's pretty 50-50 either way. It could be sarcasm, or it could not be. So let's add some context, and look at the subject of the statement.

Daikatana is a game made by John Romero. It essentially murdered his career, due to long delays, an absurd fortress/lounge development center, and the fact it featured a black man named Superfly Johnson. It is often used as a benchmark for terrible games.

That said, the likelihood that the poster of this phrase is sarcastic becomes somewhat higher. We'll say..60-40. But alright, there are people who enjoy white button mushrooms, there's no reason to believe that he's being sarcastic just offhand. Now what you want to do is investigate the poster.

1: Does he usually hold highly controversial views on things?

If he's the sort of fellow who insists on having the opposite opinion, he might very well be defending Daikatana seriously. He may not like it, but it may not be technically sarcasm, he may have some extended argument for the sake of argument.

If he usually goes along with the crowd, consider it a point for the sarcasm side.

2: What context is the statement in?

If you're seeing him discuss this in a thread about Daikatana being an excellent game, well, it's safe to assume he's telling the truth. If he's being sarcastic, he's done so poorly.

If you're seeing this in a thread about it being a terrible game, it's slightly more likely to be sarcastic. If you don't see an extended or any argument at all following the statement, it is likely sarcasm. If you treat it as such, you will likely find no issue regardless. Worst comes to worst, they'll explain themselves.

If this is in a thread about kittens, it's /probably/ going to be sarcasm.

So to try to break it down.

1: Does the statement appear to be unnecessarily contradictory with their usual stances on matters?

2: Does the context make the statement appear out of place?

That's roughly the same way your brain does it in real life, it's just that you're used to listening for vocal cues and looking for body language. Really.

And to a lot of you, this is going to seem like elementary school stuff, but apparently this confuses some people, which is fine. This is a useful skill in this day and age where everyone wants to be hip and ironic.

Stephen4Louise
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This is the worst thread I've ever read on this forum!

zonhin
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Daikatana is kind of fun in a Plan Nine From Outer Space kind of way.

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Tim
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But... but... why would those people make so much effort to let their readers guess? I mean, is it pure incompetence to write it correctly, or are they very unsure of theirselves? For example, if I write it like the following statement:


I don't think anyone would have any problem determining whether if it was meant as sarcasm or not.

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Mattcrampy
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I stand by what I said before on this topic, and I reproduce it here because I amused Banjooie with the plastic bottlecap:

it's possible to do sarcasm on the internet by keeping your sentiment sincere but changing the intensity.

For instance: "and I see it comes with a plastic cap THIS IS THE BEST THING EVER" or, taking the opposite approach, "and that's when they said they had to amputate the other leg, so, yeah, my day was a bit of a bummer". This is sarcasm, but without the ability to do a sarcastic voice, you have to resort to irony and abuse of nettiquette to get the point across.

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Malorie
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I think a lot of the confusion doesn't come from sarcasm as such, but deadpan humour.

Deadpan humour is a highly saught after skill in the modern world. UK Careers often require at least a B grade in a Deadpan Mannerisms GCSE, and it's very possible that Britain is starting a deadpan war against America, as they have a historical background of tactical knowledge.

Sadly, many people will perish for not understanding the intricacies of deadpan. There is, after all, a reason for the word 'deadpan', and it ties in well with the phrase 'Full English Breakfast'.


If deadpan humour were to contain a blatant sarcastic tone all the time, the Queen would go hungry!

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NiroZ
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What I find really amusing is that Banj missed the most obvious clue. That the sarcastic part of the statement had been altered to appear different from the rest of the post, thus indicating a change of tone, that in the real world would (when taken in context) indicate sarcasm (or emphasis to point out that it is the most important part of the post, but then again, that comes back to the tone).

I'm also glad that you didn't mention how emoticons can also indicate sarcasm, because, like, that never happens.

Maurog
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Smilies are overused. The ratio of comments that you can remove a smilie from and not lose one bit of sarcasm is about 100% (you may check this thread as an example). It just makes it easier for people to spot, but not really necessary. In fact, if you need a smilie to make your sarcasm work, your message is too rough to be used anyway. The same goes for stuff like [/sacrasm] tags. These things have their uses, but it's not really sarcasm if you give hints...

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Oneiromancer
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The best reason to use smilies or tags to indicate sarcasm is so that threads like this are not necessary.

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Malorie
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Oneiromancer wrote:
The best reason to use smilies or tags to indicate sarcasm is so that threads like this are not necessary.

But threads like these are amusing to read! ^_^
Yay for odd threads! *Campaigns for more bizarre threads!*

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Oneiromancer
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Oh, I'm not saying I'm not amused by this thread...but it's still kinda sad that it was necessary.

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Banjooie
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I find it utterly perplexing that it's necessary, but the plastic cap thing came out of it and man that's STILL funny

edit: also shut up, snacko is awesome

---

[Last edited by Banjooie at 01-13-2008 06:32 AM]

Mr. Slice
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I'll have a say in this. You can use the sarcasm tags to make a post seem sarcastic when it is less obvious. You don't have to do this when it is quite obvious that was sarcastic. Those are the most basic things to add to this topic.

If you want to avoid apology's, then don't add sarcastic comments. But, if it will add to the conversation in some way, add it, and make sure you don't kill those that didn't think it was sarcastic.

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Tim
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I find it surprising that people think think on tha Intarwebz it is not necessary to use sarcasm tags. I mean, we're not talking about Nobel Prize winners, or the top 20 users of this Forum. We have people from all over the world, and not everyone is capable of understanding English properly in all its intricacies.

edit: also shut up, snacko is awesome

Anything you say, sir. But just because I use a sarcasm tag, it doesn't mean that the statement I use is necessary false, like this:

<sarcasm>This sentence is true!</sarcasm>

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Banjooie
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I'm of the mind that at any time you're like 'man that guy's being dumb and he usually isn't', assume sarcasm.

Actually, nothing bad ever really comes out of assuming dumb things people say are sarcastic.

Znirk
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Banjooie wrote:
I'm of the mind that at any time you're like 'man that guy's being dumb and he usually isn't', assume sarcasm.

There's a problem with that one when a user is sarcastic very often. 'Man, that guy's being dumb. As usual.'

Jacob
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You spelled "The Internet" wrong.

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Jacob
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Oh dear, I didn't mean that seriously. I was kidding.
Oh the irony.

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trick
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Personally I think using sarcasm tags is the equivalent of going OH HEY I'M SO TOTALLY GOING TO SAY SOMETHING FUNNY RIGHT NOW ARE YOU READY OH GOLLY HERE GOES Daikatana is like teh best game evar! OH HAHA WASN'T THAT FUNNY IT WAS WASN'T IT YOU CAN ALL GO LOL NOW

So yeah, I'm all for it, really.

Banjooie
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Trick: My thoughts exactly. Excellent way of putting it.

BeefontheBone
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Banjooie wrote:
Trick: My thoughts exactly. Excellent way of putting it.

Wait, I'm confused - was that sarcasm or not?

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mrimer
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I dunno...he didn't use TEH CAPS anywhere...

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jbluestein
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Late to the conversation, but...

On 'some other mailing list', which I've been a member of for 17 years now, there are occasionally people who post things that they intend to be funny. (This is in between the rants, diatribes, vitriol and fluffy bunnies.)

Sometimes, the funny thing is accompanied by '[s.c.f.t.h.i.]', which translates to 'smiley captioned for the humor impaired'.

Or, as I've always read it 'I couldn't be bothered to actually make sure my joke was fuunny, so I'm just telling you that it's funny. You may laugh now.'

The whole point of certain types of humor is that they only work because of the cognitive dissonance that they generate. Holding up a 'joke' sign or adding a smiley to a humorous comment diminishes whatever funny was there to begin with.

Some types of humor are hard to do -- sarcasm and deadpan humor can be hard face-to-face, to say nothing of over the Internet. If you use this style of humor, you will eventually be misunderstood. You may even offend someone.

These are the risks, though. The funny is dangerous.

Josh

[That said, I'm really glad to see Banjooie back on the forum again.]



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Jatopian
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I think the final sentence of trick's post is an prime example of unintentional ambiguity.

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jbluestein
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You think that was unintentional?



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Maurog
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That was also my first thought, something in the overall design make these two related for some reason. But they are actually very different - look, jbluestein's is a toilet seat, while Jatopian's is the Flying Spaghetti Monster!

It's still easy to confuse who has which though. The fact that they both start with J and end with N doesn't help.

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Jatopian
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what
why aren't I told these thing early on

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NiroZ
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I've never really had a problem differentiating jbluestein from Jatopian. Its Jason and Jacob which I find confusing.

Mattcrampy
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I don't get confused between two different posters. I just pretend you're all bots.

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NoahT
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Well, the main difference between Jason and Jacob is that only Jason has an avatar, though the name "Jason Grinfeld" has come to my mind before. As for jbluestein and Jatopian, their forum ranks were different until recently, so the different colors for their usernames made them easy to distinguish. I do think that at one point, I might've found silver and Syntax confusing.

-Noah

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