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.
neurospicy
if i was drinking something id have done a spit take
Increased rates of neurodivergence on a leftist founded Reddit alternative?
It’s less “venture to guess” and more “I’d bet my life savings on that being true.”
Shit. I’m here with ADHD.
And I’m here with ADHD and likely somewhere on the to autistic spectrum (not directly diagnosed with the later but have a sibling who is, making it all but certain), along with early childhood trauma fun. And I’m likely one of the less “neurospicy” about.
neurospicy
I love that term.
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 …
I feel like that /s was sarcastic…
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.
did you not see the /s?
do we need an indicator for meta sarcasm too? how deep can this really go?
aslo /s doesn’t fix not making sense. I’m kind of an expert on that one.
My bad, I meant in general, not your specific comment
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
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On Kbin, in addition to up and downvotes, there is the Boost option, as seen in the picture.
If you are looking at these comment threads on Kbin/Mbin, when a comment/post is ‘boosted,’ it is automatically moved up higher in the thread, similarly to if it had been upvoted a lot.
Lemmy does not have Boosts, and so neither do any of the Lemmy clients on desktop/mobile.
Lastly, on Kbin you can look at the ‘Activity’ on a post which lets you see who upvoted, who downvoted, and who Boosted, which is what is shown in the picture.
I’m calling this guy out for being insecure and Boosting his own opinion to the top for visibility, despite the fact that he’s just parroting an already popular opinion in this thread.
Edit: also lol, he unboosted his post at the time of me writing this comment. But the picture captures the original tomfoolery. Also I checked his profile and that guy regularly Boosts his own comments, but I bet he removed a bunch of those by now too.
Why would kbin let you move your own comments visibility up? Is it like paid-for thing?
Not a paid for thing, anyone can do it. As far as I can tell, it was just a feature Ernest (Mr Kbin Sir Guy Creator) programmed without much thought. So it’s just a weird unique thing that Kbin can do.
Dude you’re grasping at straws. I’m sure you think you’re a genius, but you’re not. You’re wrong about this, but nothing anyone says could ever convince you if it.
Dude, you’re in the picture.
Oh i absolutely boost my own comments because it’s bizarre that it isn’t done automatically like every other site with voting in existence does. What i don’t do is use an alt account to boost it a second time
Bzzzt. Incorrect
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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.
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