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Comment by ganomi | Hacker News Reader

The /s stands for sarcasm

No it doesn't, it stands for "This used to be sarcasm but I ruined it by telling you"

People use it for a reason. Intended tone does not carry reliably over text.

I've always wondered whether /s predates, was a concurrent development, or is an evolutionary shortening of </sarcasm>.

The history went something like this:

    jk
    </sarcasm>
    <sarcasm>...</sarcasm>
    </sarcasm>
    /sarcasm
    /sarc
    /s
    \s

This punctuation is very ironic.

It also stands for "hitting over head with hammer"