The Nuances of Internet Sarcasm

Creator: Anonymous

Sarcasm’s pretty funny. When done right, you can make an entire group of people laugh and feel popular, funny, and cool at the same time. That’s why it’s been transferred over to the internet so easily—although there are nuances that need some getting used to.

Of course, when you’re sarcastic in person, there are usually indications that you’re not being serious. An inflection, a facial expression, or a pause can tell you that that person is probably joking. The internet, though, doesn't have that luxury. So how can we tell if someone is being sarcastic?

At first, exaggeration is an obvious choice. Just say something so ridiculous that nobody would believe you’re serious, and you’re good to go. It'd look something like this:

This is more along the lines of satire, but it's obviously not a serious news headline.

The first thing to note here is that it's impossible to always accurately predict exaggeration. Poe's Law (this is a real thing) says:

"Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is utterly impossible to parody a Creationist in such a way that someone won't mistake for the genuine article."

So according to Poe's Law, there's no way to guarantee that exaggeration will always be recognized unless we provide some indication. This makes sense since the internet only communicates in characters. So what can we do to indicate sarcasm? This isn't a new problem, and as a result, there are many common ways to indicate sarcasm and common ways to recognize it. A common form of irony punctuation is using a winky face:

"I'm so smart, I got a bad score on my English teacher's writing assignment ;)"

Another (less) common one is typing "/s" at the end of the statement:

I really want society to end so that I can go back to fearing for my life every single day /s

A more specific one would be aggressively alternating between lowercase and uppercase characters, which originated from an internet Spongebob meme:

There are many more indicators of sarcasm, but some of them require knowledge of other aspects of internet culture. For example, overusing emoji, which is a parody of internet users (in this case, student-athletes) who type emoji a bit too much:

Catching these nuances takes some time and getting used to. Some would agreeably argue that it's not worth your time to learn. Most teenagers (me) have spent enough time on the internet to pick up on most of these nuances, but at the end of the day, it's all subjective and there's always room for error.

Maybe we don't even need to indicate sarcasm. Deadpan/dry humor is an option, and in my experience is even more effective in person. But be sure to be ready to explain yourself when you get angry people in your comments section; Poe's Law is very much a real phenomenon.

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