Ask HN: How should I show sarcasm on the internet?

3 points·JacobEdelman··8 comments

Specifically I'm asking about how to indicate sarcasm on HN. I've seen tons of different methods on different sites and I'm left confused about which ones to use.

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Standard acceptable ways of showing sarcasm are

;)

:-)

:^)

</sarcasm>

at the end of your sarcastic statement. Largely the HN crowd doesn't like sarcasm, because it normally detracts from the discussion.

Sarcasm tends to work much better in face to face conversations (where you have audiovisual cues) compared to a written medium like HN. Considering that a large number of HN members don't have English as their first language, it would either be completely ignored or worse, seen as the opposite of what you are saying.

Your safest bet is to not indulge in saracasm on HN, lest you come across as trying too hard to be "cool".

Wordplay is one theater for sarcasm that does not lose any weight online, and is often easy for readers to appreciate immediately. There's nothing like a good pun! And of course an exclamation point terminating the penultimate sentence of a paragraph punctuated by an emoji. :)

With SarcMarc of course! http://www.sarcmark.com/ </sarcasm>

Try your best to convey it properly in your writing, and if your sarcasm is not clear apologize and maybe remove your non-content.

Try to avoid using sarcasm here. It doesn't make for good discussion.

I tend to use </sarcasm>

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