Is Sarcasm dead?
Being in the social media technology age it feels like sarcasm is difficult to work with. People and technology do not seem to understand the nuance, personality, and sarcasm without other context clues.
I recently got put in Facebook jail for using violent language. Actually, they just said I was not following the community agreements that I so carefully read through that one time, right before I clicked agree (sarcasm). I always try to read the things and a quarter of the way through legal jargon I get decision fatigue and just click yes.
On Facebook my words were used with sarcasm because I threatened to punch someone in the face. Actually I did it twice to two different people of whom are comedians and we all know each other well enough to know I’m joking. I have no literal plans or intentions of punching anyone in the face, yet I say it all of the time.
Occasionally a friend or family member will say they can hear my response. That’s because they know me well enough to know how I intended it to come across without seeing my face or other context clues. They’ve been around long enough to have a stored register of said clues so as to have a better conversation.
However, I suspect that social media has no such filters. I’d also suspect soon enough they will. I mean they have so many other things we absolutely do not need in life. Do we really need a robot dog? Actually, I do because robots never die. Creepy. What social media fails at is knowing the difference between legitimate and nonsense.
I don’t know if this was true but when the marathon bombing happened a few years back, a family was googling multiple things. So one family member was looking up a recipe that called for a pressure cooker, while another family member was looking up something else. Those internet searches alerted the authorities and they were raided or something. I mean now that I type this all out it’s sounding a bit sketch. You understand.
Nonetheless, my point is, technology does a great job at picking up the basics and gathering information we didn’t know we were communicating. Then it does not any backstory, life understanding to know it’s a joke. So then one gets put into FB jail for 24 hours, having never actually made a threat to any of my friends.
Sarcasm my first love language is not dead by my estimation. Like everything it will still require some adjusting and understanding and hopefully building. I don’t want my data to be sold and traded but I do think it would be cool if technology would learn sarcasm just like the rest of us, just hanging out with a bunch of underappreciated sarcastic people. Me. Hang out with me.
