Ask Lemmy

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.

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.

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 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

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.

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.

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.

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.

It is not. Just stop caring about fake internet points.

You're angry about people being good communicators?

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

Poe's Law

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.

/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.