comment: >
  
  Sarcasm is for assholes.   No debate.
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  Tone is hard to capture on the internet, better to be clear. In English, a significant part of sarcasm is tone of voice - there is no tone of voice on the internet.
  It's harder for non-native speakers of a language to understand subtlty like sarcasm
  It's harder for neuro-atypical people like autistic people to understand sarcasm.
  I'm a teacher with public facing leadership roles in my community. I also like to joke around on the internet. If someone were to connect my identity irl with my internet accounts I like to have plausible deniability for any outlandish jokes I've made instead of getting canceled. >
  
  TIL I do sarcasm wrong.
  I don't change my tone when I am sarcastic.
  I wait for the other party to figure it out or ask, "really?" then say no.
  Probably makes me seem like a moron and/or an asshole. >
  
  
  Probably makes me seem like a moron and/or an asshole.
  
  Depends on the frequency but I know a few people who do that a lot and honestly it can get annoying. Real conversations:
  "Hey man, wanna go to lunch?"
  "No, I just ate a huge meal."
  "Oh, you ate early today..."
  "I'm kidding let's go."
  -----
  “Man, I'm so excited to hear you talk about your Tokyo trip, how was it?"
  "Boring as hell."
  "Oh wow seriously?"
  "No, it was awesome."
  -----
  It really gets tiring after a while. >
  
  That's not even a tone issue imo, just dead humour 😂😂😂 >
  
  It's about context. If your having a conversation with people you know, even through text, you can reasonably expect them to know when your being sarcastic.
  When your having conversations with strangers, that expectation is no longer there. There are more unknown factors at play that make the likelihood of them recognising sarcasm different. They may be from different cultures, some cultures use sarcasm more commonly than others. Or languages, if English is a second language for someone sarcasm is harder to detect anyway. 
  None of this to say you have to put /s if you don't want to. But you can't then complain when people misunderstand. It's a conversational convention use it or don't. 
  
  I see someone use a fucking /s it’s not even hard to tell
  
  If you can already tell then what's the problem? It's not aimed at you then. >
  
  
  and when they realize you were being sarcastic they feel really stupid.
  
  And then you get nasty messages and before that a load of downvotes. It's just not worth it.
  
  It’s like telling a joke and then ruining it by explaining it
  
  How? You still get the joke. 
  I'd rather I got my (sarcastic) point across rather than have someone frothing at the mouth thinking I was serious and having to explain it to them.
  Also it's difficult for some people to understand sarcasm, so it's just being inclusive as well. >
  
  
  than have someone frothing at the mouth thinking I was serious and having to explain it to them.
  
  This is something I hope happens when im being sarcastic, so idk. >
  
  So you don't actually want people to know you're being sarcastic. You're trying to slip something past them to feel smart and superior, or simply to troll. This differs from how most people use sarcasm. 
  
  putting /s at the end of relies completely defeats the purpose of being sarcastic
  
  This might be true FOR YOU, but again, this doesn't apply to most uses of sarcasm. >
  
  I think you are conflating sarcasm with satire.
  Sarcasm is supposed to be understood by the audience we use sarcastic tones in our voice or we make sarcastic comments with people that know us well enough well enough to know that it is not our stance.
  Satire lives a bit more in the gray area of you either get it and see that the statement is intentionally absurd, you don't get but see that the statement is absurd and it maybe makes you think about your own position, or you agree with it and everyone else thinks you are absurd.
  Which are both different than just taking up an antagonistic position to work up another person. Which isn't sarcasm it's just trolling. >
  
  
  sarcasm doesn’t require a sarcastic tone
  
  Yes it does. Words are just words. Sarcasm is tone. It is the way you say words that makes them sarcastic or serious.
  
  it’s actually funnier when someone thinks your not being sarcastic 
  
  Sarcasm is not about being funny. I see this same idea every time someone posts about /s both on this sub and on r/UnpopularOpinion  and it is incredibly ignorant. Sarcasm is almost always used to point out how stupid someone is. If the person doesn’t know you’re being sarcastic, then you haven’t pointed anything out. You have failed.
  
  when they realize you were being sarcastic they feel really stupid.
  
  what if they never do? Again, if you are trying to communicate to someone “hey, this is how dumb you sound” and they think “hey, this guy agrees with me”, then you’ve ‘lost’ that conversation. The other person walks away confidently knowing someone shares their view. and you walk away knowing that you were misunderstood. Does being misunderstood make you happy? because that’s extremely strange if it does.
  
  It’s like telling a joke and then ruining it by explaining it
  
  Another bogus idea I’ve seen a lot. Sarcasm is not like telling jokes. The point of a joke is to make someone laugh. Explanations are not funny so if you explain a joke, 99% of the time, the audience will not laugh and you have ruined the joke (I say 99% of the time because I have seen comedians succesfully make a joke out of explaining another joke). The point of sarcasm, as I explained above, is to call out some flaw. “I think your ideas about politics/religion/culture/etc is flawed so I’m going to make a sarcastic comment about it so that you understand how flawed it is.” If you explain that you’re being sarcastic, that doesn’t change the fact that you’re calling them out. It might lessen the emotional impact, because you are telling them they’re wrong rather than them figuring it out themselves, but your point still gets across. >
  
  thanks. this is the best explanation so far. Only thing I would like to say is it’s possible to convey tone over the internet, like typing tottaaaally or using !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!. !delta >
  
  I agree this is the best explanation. And you're right that tone can be conveyed, but in my experience, it never comes across with the right tone or consistently across readers. 
  For example, tottaaally reads in a forced, pretentious tone to me (even though I know what you mean, the way you are using it). Maybe that's just me, but it's not a sarcastic tone. I have the same reaction to many emojis (cry laughing, for example). They're painful to read. 
  The point is, we are really good at using tone when speaking to convey the right emotion. We're not so good at it in text: everyone processes the tone differently. 
  On the other hand, we generally have a good idea culturally of what sarcasm means (may be different between cultures, but it doesn't matter, as long as a person has developed an internal feeling associated with sarcasm). So by ending a sarcastic comment with /s, you're leaving it up to the reader to attach tone to the words, which will sound sarcastic in their head, whatever that is for them. It's a little clunky, but it's consistent. You know the reader will read a comment in the correct tone -- sarcasm (because you told them to). >
  
  Sarcasm highly relies on vocal tone and cadence to make it known it’s sarcasm. Most people know someone is being sarcastic in real life because they make it clear In the way they said it. it may take some people longer to catch on but they catch on that the person is being sarcastic usually because of tone. 
  You can’t do that in text. And in a public place like reddit where there are people saying the most absurd things in all seriousness there are plenty of times where you can be unsure if someone was being serious or not. >
  
  Gee, I wonder if this has anything to do with sarcasm being almost completely conveyed by tone >
  
  The "Gee" in this statement is just a stand in for an /s.   Being too subtly sarcastic is hard to pickup on in text or speech.  It's all up to the writer/speaker, I guess.  I do agree with OP that most folks around here probably do it to avoid downvotes.  But I think the rest are really trying to convey how they feel so people are not confused.  
  Like, I don't want people to think that I support trump.  So I better put a /s on it to make sure. >
  
  Sometimes the /s actually stands for /serious, which means they've really doubled down on their sarcasm. Not knowing which is part of the charm. >
  
  
  The only reason people but /s is because they are afraid of getting downvoted. 
  
  or misconstrued? I couldn't care less if I'm downvoted, but I'll do it to remove any ambiguity >
  
  
  The only reason people but /s is because they are afraid of getting downvoted. Which is so sad tbh. People are afraid of the hive mind d subreddit they are in spam downvoting them because they are too stupid to realize they are being sarcastic without having a fucking /s.
  
  But that does happen. All the time. 
  
  I see someone use a fucking /s it’s not even hard to tell.
  
  Do you think all redditors have the same ability as you when it comes to detecting sarcasm? 
  The reality is that a lot of people don't always recognize sarcasm as effectively as you do. So users have learned via negative reinforcement to just add the /s to avoid confusion. If you can detect the sarcasm, then surely the /s shouldn't offend or bother you. 
  If it does bother you, then why? Perhaps you like that you can detect sarcasm better than others and like seeing other people fail to see what is obvious to you.. and so you'd rather not have the /s as some sort of test to see who can pick up on sarcasm and who can't.
  But that just brings us right back to the fact that some people recognize it better than others which is why it can be good to include the /s. 
  Also keep in mind that English is not the first language of many redditors. For them sarcasm can be much harder to identify and they can take serious offense to comments intended to be sarcastic. So perhaps some people that use /s are just being empathetic to those situations. Each individual comment is not a personal offering to just you. People may be considering other audiences as well. >
  
  
  but that does happen
  
  Yeah I know. Thats why theyre scared of it.
  And yes i do like that i can detect it better than others, thats how you tell if someone lives online like i do, if they cant tell that im joking they arent from here fr. i thought ya’ll would understand because you are from reddit but clearly you arent. clearly your fucking morons who can’t understand something like sarcasm. when i wake up every morning all i do is think about normies like you and froth at the mouth thinking of ways to avenge my fallen brothers killed at the hands of your devious ways. swarming, taking over our communities, taking our friends away from us. not leaving us alone. all we want to do is live in peace, leave us alone..
  /s >
  
  
  clearly your fucking morons
  
  It's "you're"
  As in "you're not as clever as you think you are" >
  
  wait whats the >
  
  Sarcastic comments without it being obvious is just trolling >
  
  the point is if they cant tell im being sarcastic they aren’t knowledgeable enough on the topic im talking about >
  
  More likely they just don't know you >
  
  Or you could care less what random people if the internet think, which is different than not caring about them. If you operate with good intention that comes through and getting canceled isn’t a thing. /s no /s whatever. >
  
  thats literally what i said bro >
  
  Op sounds like a troll >
  
  First of all sarcasm=/=irony. 
  
  Irony (from Ancient Greek εἰρωνεία eirōneía 'dissimulation, feigned ignorance'[1]), in its broadest sense, is the juxtaposition of what on the surface appears to be the case and what is actually the case or to be expected; it is an important rhetorical device and literary technique. 
  Sarcasm is the caustic use of words, often in a humorous way, to mock someone or something.[1] Sarcasm may employ ambivalence,[2] although it is not necessarily ironic.[3] Most noticeable in spoken word, sarcasm is mainly distinguished by the inflection with which it is spoken[4] or, with an undercurrent of irony, by the extreme disproportion of the comment to the situation, and is largely context-dependent
  
  So yeah talking about sarcasm when you don't know what sarcasm means isn't that smart. (which would be an example of sarcasm... in case you haven't noticed it (which would again be an example of sarcasm in case you... ok I stop).
  So no pointing out that it is mockery is itself a form of mockery, in case you haven't noticed... ;)
  
  and before you say “well you can’t convey tone through message” sarcasm doesn’t require a sarcastic tone
  
  It's not really tone, but meaning. Tone is just a means to transport meaning. So if you're not being serious you might underline that by a none serious tone. Or if you're saying something absolutely ridiculous you might underline it with a totally serious tone to further mark the absurdity by incongruency. 
  
  it’s actually funnier when someone thinks your not being sarcastic because that proves your point even better.
  
  In that case you're not even being ironic you're just being an asshole, a troll, a liar and the likes. So ironically that might actually be sarcasm. And further ironically you'd be right not to use the /s here because that would just make it ironic but not really sarcastic. 
  However your ongoing rant examplifies pretty effectively that this goes right over your head.
  Also give it a short thought, if you say something stupid and people assume it is stupid, what does it mean they think about you? And is it really their fault to assume that? >
  
  I like this comment.
  When I'm making a sarcastic comment I want it to possibly be ambiguous and I usually won't use an /s. I agree that ruins the joke. If a joke is funny you don't need to explain it's a joke, same for sarcasm.
  When I'm making an ironic comment it's usually one that sounds completely serious if the intention is not known or if the reader fails to adequately consider the implications. That is the case in which I will use an /s. >
  
  The purpose of the /s actually is to prevent people from misinterpreting the poster.  Misinterpretation of intent is a great way to turn the forum into a combat zone. What purpose does that serve, unless the posters purpose is to troll the forum.  In fact, your CMV reads like an attempt to justify trolling.  
  Actually , its not funny when people don't think you're being sarcastic, and often is outright cruel.  If you find it fun to cause distress in people who did nothing to hurt, harm, or degrade your dignity, then you inhabit a different ethical universe than I do. >
  
  It's 2023 man 
  Yeah sure in 2013 it wasaybe unnecessary bur then in 2013 30 percent of the user base wasn't conspiracy theory crazies
  Sure a decade ago saying "wow I sure can't wait to get sick and start dying from a preventable disease in 2012" wouldn't of needed a s on the end 
  In 2023 though that comment with no s is gonna have you swarmed with comments from mouth breathers attacking you for being a sheep to big pharma 
  Things change, the s is neccesart >
  
  this is weirdly specific bro >
  
  It's social media. 10 years ago I wouldn't have had a problem saying things like "next thing you'll say the earth is round" and have it understood. But then there were mostly private forums and such.  Now you can write things and they can be read by anyone on the planet and you say such things and people think you're a flat-earther and respond to that. >
  
  You misspelled "replies", therefore your opinion is invalid.