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Comment by jprete | Hacker News Reader

It's really, really close though. The kill distance of six miles is what tips me over the edge of reading it as sarcasm.

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Really? To me, it is a very clear instance. Amongst my cohort, saying "The safety officer won't let us do anything fun" is going to generally always be sarcastic, unless the point is that some rules seem excessively and obviously pointless, which these aren't. It's more a backhanded way of saying "thank goodness the safety office stopped us / those boneheads from doing something that would have been incredibly stupid."

It depends totally on how you read it. In this case, my first thought after reading that was "play stupid games, win stupid prizes". There are plenty of people (especially on the internet) who actually do think that way -- by which I mean people that are serious when they respond with "you guys ruin all the fun" to others who bring up genuine concerns that will most likely have wide-sweeping ramifications.

> There are plenty of people (especially on the internet) who actually do think that way

Sure. That's why these safety officers exist. I think some other funranium posts state.that (paraphrased) "safety rules are written in blood."

That said, I suspect folks like that would tend to phrase the rule in a way to diminish the implied impact/likelihood, rather than enhance it or state as-is, as (afaict) the original did.

like finishing a comment with, "we walked away with all our fingers -- perfect to flip the safety officer the bird"

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