Age of Credulity?

[JohnnyB]

Originally Posted by octothorp

I just remembered reading this article, which is kinda cool, about how the brain actually processes sarcasm and why some people are unable to get it due to neurological reasons.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/03/he...ch/03sarc.html

Ha! I was just about to post that link too!
I think the green highlighting is just kind of silly. Like you're telling a joke, but you've gotta introduce it as funny before you tell it. Maybe this is why some people can't catch a joke...

perceiving sarcasm, the smirking put-down that buries its barb by stating the opposite, requires a nifty mental trick that lies at the heart of social relations: figuring out what others are thinking. Those who lose the ability, whether through a head injury or the frontotemporal dementias afflicting the patients in Dr. Rankin’s study, just do not get it when someone says during a hurricane, “Nice weather we’re having."

[missdpuck]

Originally Posted by jammies

Cormac McCarthy.

Funny that I also read Call of the Wild when I was around 12, as well as White Fang. I thought they were very dark novels despite the "young readers" label on them.

Agree on that. After reading them as an adult I wondered why they are kids books. I have a stack of MCarthy's books that I've never read. Not sure why. Come to think of it maybe London's books just have multiple levels of meaning...kinda like the Flintstones

[missdpuck]

Anyone ever read "The Man Who Tasted Shapes" or "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat"?

[kermitology]

Originally Posted by jammies

Cormac McCarthy.

Funny that I also read Call of the Wild when I was around 12, as well as White Fang. I thought they were very dark novels despite the "young readers" label on them.

Looks like you've messed it up a bit. Quotation marks have no place in Cormac McCarthy's world.

[jammies]

Originally Posted by kermitology

Looks like you've messed it up a bit. Quotation marks have no place in Cormac McCarthy's world.

I'm quoting him.

[missdpuck]

I'll be starting "The Crossing" as soon as I finish "Little Children" and my re-read of "Empire Falls". The latter irritated the crap out of me the first time. But I'm not on the Pulitzer committee am I?

[Swarly]

the green sarcasm text is like being told the punch line of the joke first. you see the green and before you even read the joke know whats happening. I say we use invisible text behind the line so that if someone does take you serious you can always tell them to go back and highlight it as follows:

I like 8 year olds /sarcasm

[Bobblehead]

But is the ability for the average person to recognize satire diminishing?

I wonder if the world hasn't gotten so small that people hear so many crazy things that are true that the average person is reluctant to discount things and has a tougher time picking up on the queues of satire.

Or perhaps there is so much information available that people don't have time to filter that information. Satire isn't accepted because people don't take the time to think critically for fear of missing the next piece of information.

I just thought it was an interesting piece Roger Ebert.

And he also has some interesting responses in his "Answer man" section.

By Roger Ebert

Q. Yo dude, u missed out on "Disaster Movie," a hardcore laugh-ur-@zz-off movie! Y U not review this movie!? It was funny as #ell! Prolly the funniest movie of the summer! U never review these, wat up wit dat?

S.J. Stanczak, Chicago

A. Hey, bro, I wuz buzier than $#i+, @d they never shoed it b4 hand. I peeped in the IMDb and saw it zoomed to #1 as the low$ie$t flic of all time, wit @ lame-@zz UZer Rating of 1.3. U liked it? Wat up wit dat?

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/...809119984/1023

[FanIn80]

Preface: I had posted this (a couple minutes ago) in the Clay Aiken thread. Of course, I then realized that that was kind of dumb since it was being discussed here... in fact, I only posted it in the other thread because of the first post here...

Man, I'm not doing so good with the internets thing lately.

Anyway... here it is...
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The point people sometimes miss is the difference in medium.

In the everyday world, a person has clues they can use in order to identify a sarcastic comment: facial expressions, body language, vocal afflictions etc.

In text, there are none of those clues available. Hence, the advent of some sort of visual clue. In the past, I have actually spelled out the fact that I am being sarcastic (in parenthesis), so that everyone reading my comments would know I didn't really believe that a tomato was going to come to life and kill everyone.

I think it's important to remember that not everyone here has the same level of reading comprehension as everyone else. Some people might consider that to be a pain in their ass, but others might choose to remember that we're all here to talk (ultimately) about hockey. If this was a forum about reading books and analyzing literature, then I could understand that it might seem out of place to have to pre-identify a sarcastic response.

Remember that really good sarcasm is very difficult to detect even with all the clues you get in real life; it's almost impossible to detect on a message board without any kind of visual clue at all.

Mind you... I own a PHD in sarcasm, so everything's all groovy to me.

[missdpuck]

My cat's ready to fight your cat.....

[Dan02]

Originally Posted by Swarly

I say we use invisible text behind the line so that if someone does take you serious you can always tell them to go back and highlight it as follows:

I like 8 year olds /sarcasm

I would like to second this option, 7.324 billion times better then green text.

[Vulcan]

One of the great examples of sarcasm on this board is Fotz's signature, "how about those Flames".

If you don't know the story, it's just a fan cheering on his team and if you know it, well it's twisted but hilarious.

I think part of the problem when I try to use sarcasm is that others here don't know me well enough, but with Fotz, everyone knows his humour.

[missdpuck]

Fotze cracks me up..one of my favorites.