Another gullible one here. If people do that “telling a story with a straight face” thing, I almost always say “really? I’ve never heard of that, how bizarre”! I am certainly missing that thing that lets me know it’s just someone being silly. And I don’t have any excuse, my entire family is heavily infected by the “silly gene” (I don’t think of these jokes as necessarily sarcastic, just someone being silly for silliness’ sake).
But yet time and again, I believe it.
It’s funny, because in many other ways, I can be hugely skeptical.
I hope I’m not speaking for monstro here, but I don’t think that’s quite the type of thing she is talking about. FWIW, your comment would crack me up. If I’m guessing right, what monstro means is something that’s more of a story that sounds completely plausible in tone and content, but is really pure silliness but silliness that’s …what’s the word…too subtle maybe, in a lot of instances, so that it goes right over our heads. Hope I got that right.
Are you on the autistic spectrum at all? I ask because my daughter is, and she has had to work hard to learn what is sarcastic or not. She is also bright and a lovely person, just in case it seems like I’m insulting you.
Since sarcasm relies so much on pitch, being “tone-deaf” would make it more difficult to detect too.
Generally, replay the sentence in your head and see if the word stress and the pitch at the end of the sentence sound wrong somehow. With more obvious sarcasm, the speaker might overstress a vowel, like really becoming re-ally, plus the pitch going down instead of up or remaining neutral.
More subtle sarcasm relies more on situational cues and those are harder to learn.
See now, with something like this, I could go either way. I can totally see myself saying something just like what the 62 year old said in a similar circumstance, and have. But OTOH, I can also see the earnest people-pleaser side of me me dashing off to get more bags before my practical side had properly computed the statement.
Depends on the people. I enjoy it a lot and use it quite a lot myself, and so do two of my brothers (to the utter confusion of our very straightforward mom) and several of my coworkers (leading sometimes to long absurd conversations at my workplace, although we run occasionnally into Poe’s law issues)
I would deliver that line straight. So would my previously mentioned brothers and coworkers. It’s not that rare, really. Of course, even if you use sarcasm quite a lot, you don’t have a magic way to detect it. So, you rely on your knowledge of the person delivering the line and of the issue being mentioned to decide whether it’s sarcasm or a straightforward statement. And you can be wrong. Or at times doubtful. I’d probably be eaten by the gators if my coworker warned me about them. More seriously, I also mistaken actual criticism at work for humour.
I don’t think I’d be fooled by madmonk, but I’d almost be fooled. I would hear “They found me in a basket on the Potomoc River” and open my mouth to say “Really?” before I heard “when I was 33.” And (sorry madmonk!) I probably wouldn’t laugh.
I’m realizing my “problem” is not only that I don’t pick up on sarcasm easily, but when I do it’s typically not funny to me. So I don’t laugh. Or my fake-laughs are obvious fake-laugh. Which explains why people think I’m very serious and ultra cold, when I think I’m just a little serious…and merely lukewarm. I’m now working on this with my Trained Professional[sup]TM[/sup]. I’m learning how to be more expressive when interacting with people and how to be more receptive to their emotions, including their humor.
No offense taken. I don’t consider myself autistic. But some of my quirks have been clinically described that way because I hit the magic number of boxes. I am personally agnostic on the subject and will probably always remain as such.
Now that you mention it, that’s probably exactly what would happen to me. My brain would fasten on the “found me on the riverbank” and would be formulating a somewhat surprised “really”?
Well, I think it’s kind of “on them” then, though I get what you mean, sometimes you gotta do the “teamplayer” thing. People are all different, and all of us aren’t going to have the same sense of humor (I don’t find fart or poop jokes funny at all. I know…shocking). Personally, I’ve seen you make some very clever-funny statements in here, so imho, your sense of humor is just fine.
