Oneiromancer
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Click me.

An article about a study that was done recently where they had people send e-mails to one another that could be sarcastic or just normal. The people who sent them figured that they would be interpreted correctly 80% of the time, when in fact they were only interpreted correctly 50% of the time. (And the ones that received the e-mails assumed they interpreted them correctly 90% of the time.)

Originally seen on Slashdot but I figured it was appropriate enough for a forum....although considering that we see almost no flame wars perhaps this is something we all already know.

Game on,

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Citrus
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Nice article. And I don't mean that sarcasticly!

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Swivel
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This is basically equivalent to my Theory of Forum Dislike (and to the Theory of Modding Down Banjooie). The last sentence in the article is irrelevant to the subject matter of the rest of the article, however. Otherwise, spiffy link.

Tim
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Swivel wrote:
This is basically equivalent [..] to the Theory of Modding Down Banjooie.

Heh? I thought that the Modding Down Banjooie was because someone misread a pronoun. Not because the message was sarcastic or not.

To be honest, this could mean that all those nice messages from Banjooie could be sarcastic. And I thought he was a really nice guy...

-- Tim (this is meant as a sarcastic post, before someone misunderstood it)

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gamer_extreme_101
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I rarely mod people down, mainly because I tend to have the sarcasm that Banjooie and others have in real life. It doesn't show as much in my writing, but I can understand where people are coming from.

Going to the Theory of Modding Down, if I feel that a post has been unfairly modded down, I'll mod it back to zero. I've done this with at least a dozen of Banjooie's posts, and I don't mind. The only time I'll ever mod a post down or even let a mod stand is for the following things. Note how most of these things are fairly easy to interpret, no matter what your beliefs are:

-A person doing something completly contradictory to somthing they said or believe in. For instance, telling someone "Not to clutter up a thread with useless things because they don't use a certain kind of tag in other threads" and then using that tag in another thread. I know that people will start shouting out names and such, and I hold nothing against this forumnite anymore, but at the time it was just plain ignorant.

-Plain ignorance. Blatently ignoring the obvious and common sense. This falls into ignoring forum rules, or even general etiquiette. Sadly, most of humanity is plagued with this, so I'm a bit more lenient in this sense.

-Non-opinionated views of things. Blatently saying that something sucks or using various insults on either a person, product, or thing without stating reasons to back it up. If you want to trash something, at least give people a reason to either support you or to show you reasons to support it. Just posting "man this hold is the crappiest thing I have evar seen why doesn't the dude just go and live in a dumpster for the rest of his life" doesn't give me a reason to dislike the hold. I have no way of telling what it was about the hold that sucked for you. Give some facts to support opinions. Always.

-Zero-tolerance for any kind of slurs against a group or person, whether it be in a joking kind or in a serious insulting kind. Humans have the right to be treated with respect always. Anyone who ignores that fact has a right to, in my opinion, fail at life. If your whole goal in life is to make people who are different from you insignificant, then you have some issues to deal with.

Phew. That was a rather longer rant than I expected. I do agree with the article though - humans are horrible at judging what other humans are saying, and it's pretty darn sad.

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b0rsuk
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But most people on the internet don't seem to know difference between they're, their or there, so why should it be suprising ? The article doesn't show that the internet is unsuitable for sarcasm, it shows most people simply don't get sarcasm at all. I fail to see what does the internet have to do with it.
Same story with lose and loose.

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Alneyan
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b0rsuk wrote:
Same story with lose and loose.

How dare you forget about the apostrophe? Surely you cannot mention "loose" while being oblivious to the plight of the apostrophe!

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[Last edited by Alneyan at 02-13-2006 11:33 PM]

Swivel
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You can't speak of the apostrophes when people have no idea that commas are used to set off an auxiliary phrase. Oh, the ignominy! And what shall we say of the semicolon? It's doomed! Doomed, I tell you! And what of our friends "good" and "well"? Does the unsuspecting person who says that he "feels well" realize that he is implying the existence of his developed skills at feeling things, like cookies and nephrons?

Who needs social issues when you have grammar?

RoboBob3000
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gamer_extreme_101 wrote:
-Zero-tolerance for any kind of slurs against a group or person, whether it be in a joking kind or in a serious insulting kind. Humans have the right to be treated with respect always. Anyone who ignores that fact has a right to, in my opinion, fail at life. If your whole goal in life is to make people who are different from you insignificant, then you have some issues to deal with.

Except for Hittites. Boy, do I hate Hittites. Always walking into bars.

Also, I mod down sarcasm as a rule.

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Swivel
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Actually, I'm doing a report about Hittite mythology. Should I cite you as a source, Ryan?

No! I was being sarcastic! Wait -- that's not a good defense anymore!

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[Last edited by Swivel at 02-14-2006 01:46 AM : In my defenscscse, I was in Britain at the time.]

Pinnacle
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Swivel wrote:
In my defenscscse

Can't decide between defense and defence, I see?

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Znirk
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Pinnacle wrote:

Swivel wrote:
In my defenscscse

Can't decide between defense and defence, I see?

Sitting on the fensce, I'd call it.

jamie
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b0rsuk wrote:
But most people on the internet don't seem to know difference between they're, their or there, so why should it be suprising ? The article doesn't show that the internet is unsuitable for sarcasm, it shows most people simply don't get sarcasm at all. I fail to see what does the internet have to do with it.
Same story with lose and loose.

That's "surprising".

HTH HAND.


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Banjooie
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I like how I was mentioned in this thread by the /second post/.

bandit1200
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Let's not forget the overuse of the exclamation mark!!!!!! Nor the sometimes strange use of the question mark? Will people never learn?!?!?!?! Still, the humble full stop could never be misused. Could it.?

Swivel
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Full stop? Oh, you British spellers. Surely you know that the US is the center of the world (that’s how it looks on our maps!) and thus it’s called a period. Jeez; I thought that people would understand our superiority. Right? That’s why America has like the highest scores in educational stuff (cough-no-it-doesn’t-cough).

bandit1200
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Full stop? Oh, you British spellers.

I take great exception to that. There was nothing wrong with my spelling.

Surely you know that the US is the center of the world

Oh yeah, we know that. As Ricky Gervais said when picking up his Golden Globe, "I'm not from around these parts. I'm from a small place called England. We used to run the world before you."

That’s why America has like the highest scores in educational stuff

Ha. Yoofspeak.

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[Last edited by bandit1200 at 02-15-2006 07:36 PM]

b0rsuk
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jamie wrote:
That's "surprising".

That's one of the the words I can't grasp. But because I rarely remember the correct spelling, it doesn't bother me when I see it spelled wrong.
At least I finally learned how to spell probability, strength and lightning.

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[Last edited by b0rsuk at 02-17-2006 12:02 AM]

jamie
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It doesn't bother me either.. It was just the context of your post that warranted the reply :p

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agaricus5
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Znirk wrote:

Pinnacle wrote:

Swivel wrote:
In my defenscscse

Can't decide between defense and defence, I see?

Sitting on the fensce, I'd call it.

It's flawlessly consisteaint!

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