Do Americans "not get sarcasm"?

[BonsaiK]

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.

Americans are fine with sarcasm, it's irony they sometimes struggle with.

The internet, on the other hand, doesn't get sarcasm at all. Never use it, ever. Also never use sarcasm in any form of text communication such as sms.

 

[Frozen Donkey Wheel2]

naah its just that sarcasm dosen't translate well onto the internet.

Pretty much this.

You both typed it for me.

 

[Meggiepants]

No. We don't. And as an American I demand people stop using it.

Last week, my sister said she thought this joke I told about dog poo was brilliant. I signed up for improv night and not one person laughed. I was booed off the stage. When I confronted my sister she said she was being sarcastic. I invited all my friends and family to see me perform. I even invited my boss. I've been fired, disowned my my family, and un-friended on all the social networking sites.

My life is ruined. Because of sarcasm. Sarcasm can go to hell.

 

[DeadlyYellow]

Yes, yes, everyone knows Americans cannot be sarcastic.

 

[Outright Villainy]

Americans are fine with sarcasm, it's irony they sometimes struggle with.

The rest of the world is hardly exempt from gross misuse of irony either. At least 80% of my friends misuse it all the time. Must resist urge to smack!

 

[Thedayrecker]

Nah its just that sarcasm dosen't translate well onto the internet.

This can explain a lot of misunderstandings.

Also every American is obviously retarded
[small][sub][sub][sub]See what I did there?[/sub][/sub][/sub][/small]

 

[Thaius]

Not part of American culture. But it's hard to detect sarcasm with text, so sarcastic comments are often taken seriously. There are a lot of idiots out there: a sarcastic comment without sarcastic tone could mean anything.

 

[BadassCyborg]

America is such a fine amazing superb country with the best funniest comedy ever.

 

[spartan231490]

I cannot imagine you being more wrong. sarchasm fails on the internet, but i have not met a single person who isn't sarchastic several times a day.(I live in america if that was unclear.)

 

[Leadfinger]

"It was long after that I recognized sarcasm as the protest of people who are weak."
---John Knowles (A Separate Peace)

 

[Zerazar]

Well, considering how many Americans there are, then yes, you are probably more likely to be missunderstood by an American than a european. Putting people into boxes is generally bad; putting them into boxes consisting of many million people at the time is worse.

But to be honest it seemed like a reasonable question despite the accusations of attempting to start a hate thread: Cultures are different, even between nations in the west. It would was not an impossible case, and the question was asked politely.

 

[oppp7]

I fail at reading sarcasm. Don't think it's because of my nationality though.

 

[Dancingman]

Sarcasm through text is next to impossible to do, which is one of the great unspoken difficulties of satire. I don't think "getting something" is particularly nation-based either.

 

[Jark212]

Nah its just that sarcasm doesn't translate well onto the internet.

This, we Americans typically love sarcasm (Or at least most people I know), we even have people that build entire carriers on it (See, The Daily Show, Colbert Report, Penn & Teller, Fox News)...

 

[Yuno]

As people have said before, the main reason would be because it's the internet. When talking to someone through a messenger, if they're my friend and have known me for a while, they'll be able to tell if I'm sarcastic right away. Otherwise, it may not be too easy, which is why I try to not be sarcastic when on a forum for example, because things like the OP's situation can happen.

I really don't think it's just Americans, not that I can blame you for coming to that conclusion. This is coming from someone from America, mind you.

 

[manaman]

I had forgotten about the cold lack of emotion in text.

Because thinking 300 million people have not grasped the concept of sarcasm is a easier conclusion to come to?

Its about as easy as realising that in canada things are priced in the canadian doller and your change will be in canadian currency. I live in a tourist town and when I was in highschool worked in the tourism industry and I always got questioned by americans on that. Things like is this price in canadian? Or why are you giving me change in canadian dollers? They also tended to be extremely angry about the change situation.


Sarcasm is very hard to portray on the internet.

I would say that was totally absurd of US citizens to think that way, after all you don't fly off to Europe and expect to spend US dollars, except every border town I have been to in Canada took US dollars and give back US money as change half the time. Same thing with Mexico. In fact they took US money just about everywhere I have gone in Mexico, while in Canada this was mostly confined to places close to the border.

It's the same thing in the US. Here in Washington the further north I get the more likely Canadian money (especially the change that is similar size) is going to be in circulation, and when you get towards the boarder they will likely accept Canadian currency.

Besides that's just a bit a bias anyway. Think about it logically. How often was a transaction completed with minimal fuss by a tourist? Could you always pin down where they where from?

What you have is confirmation bias. This is where a preconception or hypothesis colors the way you perceive new information. In this case you likely noticed what you did because they made themselves noticeable. Which makes anytime anything similar occurred later that much more memorable. While anything contradictory was soon forgotten (as in those transactions that went smoothly).

In order to get a real unbiased results, making your statement a true fact you would need to survey every customer after the transaction was complete to get their country of residency, and note before what currency they paid in, if they hassled you about that currency, or if they forgot before hand and where courteous or not when you reminded them.

 

[Booze Zombie]

I really don't think it's just Americans, not that I can blame you for coming to that conclusion. This is coming from someone from America, mind you.

It's easy to jump to that conclusion, not because of any lack of intelligence on the part of Americans but because the loud and "advertised" (crazy enough to make international news) part of America doesn't really seem that keen on using sarcasm.

I knew a generalisation would be inherently wrong, but it was still fun making this topic and talking with people.
Uh, typing with people.

from watching a lot of t.v. i think the only difference between american and british humor is that brits think a guy in a dress is much much funnier than americans do.

Little Britain is terrible, please don't gauge our humour with that show.
I beg of you.

I fail at reading sarcasm. Don't think it's because of my nationality though.

Well, my original thought, when I wrote the OP was "is this cultural" so it's more to do with culture than anything racial.
Kind of like how people in Japan like kind of "cruel" humour and people in America seem to appreciate humour were people moan about how boring life gets.

It was still a generalisation, but it was a bit more logical than myself being racist... or at least, I hope it was.

Sarcasm through text is next to impossible to do, which is one of the great unspoken difficulties of satire. I don't think "getting something" is particularly nation-based either.

I was under the impression that it could be culture based, I mean even with stark-individualists, your culture still moulds you.

I knew I was most likely wrong when asking this question, but I felt since I had bothered to reply to some pissant in a comments section on a website, I might as well bother to post about this thought I had whilst being angry at said person.
Probably not the best idea to formulate stuff whilst angry, though.

Unless you invent swear words...

Well, considering how many Americans there are, then yes, you are probably more likely to be missunderstood by an American than a european. Putting people into boxes is generally bad; putting them into boxes consisting of many million people at the time is worse.

But to be honest it seemed like a reasonable question despite the accusations of attempting to start a hate thread: Cultures are different, even between nations in the west. It would was not an impossible case, and the question was asked politely.

Thanks for that and I was aware of how bad generalising would be, so I decided instead of making one and keeping that as a truth in my head, I'd just go ask you people on the 'net what you thought.

Obviously, Americans aren't all the same, but it's easy to blame it on culture when you get angry.

 

[dalek sec]

Nah its just that sarcasm dosen't translate well onto the internet.

Pretty much this, text is just a hard thing to go by because you can't hear how the person is saying the words in question.

 

[StANDY1338]

I always thought that it was irony they didn't understand.

 

[Booze Zombie]

Pretty much this, text is just a hard thing to go by because you can't hear how the person is saying the words in question.

Yeah, I really do get that now.
I overlooked it at the time, though, due to being tired and well... people seem to miss my humour anyway, it just seems like no one takes the time to think about jokes anymore or they don't care.

It's kind of disheartening.

A lot of people (my fellow Americans) don't seem to get my sarcastic humour... I think you might have something, but I would also argue that telling jokes in text form over the internets is an exercise in futility.

I just hadn't thought about it before, really.
Uh, the text part.