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Your comment comes across as sincere. Mine was sincere, but an overstatement. I should have said that sarcasm tends to be recursive, until broken by sincerity. Anyway, here's my take on the chain:

SomeHacker44 -- sincere

CGamesPlay -- sincere

blktiger -- sarcastic

i_cant_speel -- mildly sarcastic

jazoom -- sincere

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Yes because what we have always known about sarcasm and what this thread is a perfect example of is how you can define something as sarcastic/not sarcastic just by how it subjectively "comes across".

Yes, you can guess. But assessment depends strongly on context. And Pow's Law still applies. People can write messages that seem sincere, and then later claim sarcasm. As in "I was only joking". Or people can write sincerely, but come across as sarcastic, or vice versa, and yet be ambiguous enough that readers can't tell. That's where the /s flag help. Done intentionally, such ambiguous messages can probe the reader's state of mind. Or set traps.

But maybe you're just being sarcastic ;)

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