As many of you know, this message board was founded on the principles of rational discourse. That said, it appears that some participants occasionally imbue their posts with information that is less than accurate. Now some of these posters actually believe that what they sent was accurate, and towards them I have no gripe; after all, it is only in the crucible of learned discussion that the wheat can be separated from the chaff. Facts, too.
However, it seems that others posit items in their messages that are intentionally false, or state opinions that they do not actually hold, as a “joke”. Now, in spoken conversation, when someone uses sarcasm, they can indicate this in their intonation or body language.
But here, on the Internet, neither your voice nor your body is hearable or viewable, unless you are on one of those websites I see in my email “inbox”. With this new paradigm of communication via text, there are no cues available to the reader to recognize irony. This is why the smiley faces (e.g., the viking smiley 3:-) were created when the Internet was invented in 1994.
With these new cues, it is now possible to determine when the writer is being intentionally facetious, but only when they make the effort to use the appropriate smiley face. If not, we might as well be back in the nineteenth century, for all we can recognize sarcasm in text.
Thank you for “listening” to my modest proposal. I hope you will take it to heart.
He who pubishes his GPS coordinates in his profile would do well to avoid riling up ChiefScott. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t have access to cruise missiles, but I’m not positive. Best be safe.
At least 50% of my posts are sarcastic and/or joking. I almost never use smilies in such cases. To do so ruins the joke, in my opinion. If the comment isn’t recognizable as a joke from context, then it’s failed. Following every remark with a just doesn’t carry the same impact.
Those coordinates aren’t for my house, but the center of town. So the cruise missiles would hit a Starbucks or something. That wouldn’t be so bad, but there’s a good sushi restaurant next door that I would miss.
I work at a call center where I have nothing to do between calls, which are sometimes infrequent. So yeah, I do have a lot of free time.
? I would think that’s even more confusing than leaving it smiley-less.
:mad: ;j
:dubious: :rolleyes: 
just doesn’t carry the same impact.