Booze Zombie said:
I had recently posted a joke in a comment on a website (not naming names) and I was surprised that my throwaway joke was actually taken as a serious comment, with people explaining to me how stupid I was.
One realised and the other now thinks I'm a moron trying to pretend something stupid I said was a joke.
I got to thinking whilst typing up my final response that this only seems to be a problem with Americans, Americans seem to be very literal, their humour kind of blunt and shouty, I suppose.
Am I wrong, do you think or is this indeed part of American culture?
A lack of sarcasm, that is.
Example of obvious sarcasm being used with black and white text:
(Oh sure, we don't get sarcasm... I guess that means that everyone else in the whole world is comparable to Cambridge/Harvard/Oxford graduates with degrees in law, physics, and medicine right? Oh, and I guess you're including the Canadians, the people hailing from Latin America and Mexico, AND the South Americans in that GENERALIZATION right? You're not? Why's that? They have AMERICA in their continent's TITLE don't they? Never thought of that now did you? Or maybe it's just that when the word "America" is thrown about, people from across the various seas instantly point fingers at the people living within the country of the United States of America because we have the name of our continent within the name of our country. I guess the saying "Ignorance is bliss" really is true.)
End example.
Aaaaaaanyway....aside from showing obvious emotion by way of capitalization, spacing and punctuation, literate people aren't going to be able to tell the difference if you choose to use plain black and white text because emotion isn't black and white. Colored text can help describe outstanding emotion while smilies, capitalization, word use, spacing and amount of text will better provide emotion. :] The internet is full of ignorant and sarcastic pricks that love starting flame wars just to see conflict. Therefore you really should carefully read through comments that you're given and try to decipher the commentator's angle before making gross exaggerations that would ultimately create a worse outcome. Generalizations aren't a very good thing to fall back on because most of the time they aren't true and can really upset someone. Whether or not you're using sarcasm, you should keep in mind that not everyone has the same opinions/views as yourself, and some people are more easily offended than others.
Granted, you can't please everyone, but it's better just to live and let live. :]
