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Comment by okreallywtf | Hacker News Reader

Seems unfair to downvote you just for misunderstanding, that was sarcasm friend.

It's pretty much an unwritten rule that a sarcastic joke on the internet with sufficient exposure will get a response by someone who didn't get it. Using /s really kills the fun (and whole point) of using sarcasm so it's a trade off to accept these comments will happen.

I'm impartial to downvoting as to reply literally doesn't usually add to the conversation, which is generally the point of downvoting. Losing karma shouldn't hurt your feelings.

Known as Poe's Law [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law

I will don't understand why it's called Poe's Law if he said it in 2005. This phenomenon was well documented on Usenet by the early nineties.

If we called everything that was first described on Usenet as "Usenet's Law" then everything would be Usenet's law, probably even a couple of things in physics.

Also known as Usenet's Law [1].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14561801

Known as Stigler's law.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stigler%27s_law_of_eponymy

Poe's Law is when extreme views seem to self-parody. That's different from someone missing the joke on mundane sarcasm.

Do you mean partial to? As in, you favor downvoting over commenting to point out their mistake? Don't mean to be nitpicky, just genuinely confused if that was a mistake or I'm misunderstanding.

I meant that as I'm indifferent to whether or not they get downvoted but I see there could be a justification for doing so.

Could also be that the reply is also an attempt to play the into the joke (kind of like a vaudeville straight man).

Yeah, I guess. If the person didn't catch the sarcasm they probably won't catch why they are being downvoted, at least 1 person has to tell them.

Yeah but we are human. Most people's feeling probably are hurt when their [non-malicious] comments are downvoted. But besides that I mostly agree with what you wrote.

I strongly think \s should be enforced in every post in HN.\s

Killed the fun with the second one.

I can't debate sarcasm.

For portability you should use /s, not \s. \s only works on Windows.

You should have escaped the tag, like this \\s. Your second tag closed, forcing people to take your post seriously.

I'm confused. Do you mean that we're allowed to create posts on Hacker News that are not sarcastic? I thought there was a rule, with a powerful AI enforcing it, stating that all posts had to be sarcastic. (Warning, this post is sarcastic and not meant to be taken literally.)

I've grown so tired of sarcasm. Online and in real life people are often saying the exact opposite of what they mean. We have to pick up the sarcasam to truly understand.

sarcasm is one of the true idiosyncrasies of humanity that differentiates us from the machines. Embrace it.

Right up until we can type "include('sarcasm')" and have it work.

The real issue with sarcasm is that it actually places the burden of subtleness on the speaker, whereas people will usually blame the listener for not understanding. If the tone and wording isn't just about perfect, then it's obviously easy to miss sarcasm, let alone the humorous intent. And that is sometimes very hard in writing, hence the "/s" which ruins the fun for everybody. Likewise if the listener isn't educated about the object of sarcasm, little can s/he get the irony of the statement... I think missed sarcasm has more to do with failed cultural fit than fault of anyone involved. Which is probably why it's much more common and accepted within social circles than in general discussion. HN clearly fits the former, though; sarcasm is just about yet another norm here!

> HN clearly fits the former, though; sarcasm is just about yet another norm here!

Agreed, this is why I didn't want to take a hard position on downvoting someone for missing the sarcasm. We're in a public forum which crosses cultural boundaries. I see the argument for both sides.

Although I lean more towards downvoting as the majority of people on HN will get the joke and it's an opportunity to learn for those unfamiliar with the mainstream culture.

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