I’m assuming that they understood that, because they said (I assume pejoratively) that they sounded like a “can’t be racist against white people” leftist. If they had failed to notice the sarcasm, they would be taking the sarcasm at face value and seeing a pro-male, “all lives matter” type take

I noticed, but I was taught to take note of the things that people joke about and the /s below a statement doesn’t make it without meaning. The mocking of what every reddit MRA is automatically going to say came loud and clear, but in their hyperbolic implication that men have no issues (or none worth mentioning), they’ve shot over the mark into the technical definition of misandry. This doesn’t get to be Schroedinger’s Patriarchy, that isn’t how feminism works. Downplaying it is why none of them go to therapy, though.

Idk if that’s how they actually see things or not. It was obviously written out of frustration, which is why I’m chalking it down to One Of Those Days. I scrolled past it twice before deciding to say something, because it really did feel out of left field and that kind of generalized malice just makes things worse.

Some guy who was already having a shit time is going to read that and it has to make them tired at best. At worst, less likely to take actual issues seriously when they’re just implicitly insulted out of the gate before anyone even said anything. Spite is wrong, but that doesn’t make people less spiteful and they remember how you make them feel.

I really wanna get as far away from Reddit Culture as possible, to be honest, which I know is a losing battle when we all came from Reddit but I gotta have some hopes up or the universe will be out of a hobby

Edit: in the spirit of not being reddit, I am appreciating how many took the time to explain /s instead of jumping aaaaall the way down my throat like I expected

“/s” was popular on reddit (though not with everyone), probably because so many users didn’t speak English as their native language, and sarcasm could be hard for them to detect.

This is anecdotal but I believe that the /s tag was so common in Reddit for another reason: users (both native and non-native) unable to retrieve info from context. Those context-illiterate users miss the “clues” that a certain statement should not be taken at its face value.

I’m saying this for a few reasons:

• Decontextualisation is rampant in Reddit. Even within a single comment chain.
• I’ve informally observed a few discussions caused by poster A saying something clearly sarcastic, and poster B taking it at face value. A lot of the times, both A and B are native English speakers.
• When you’re speaking, tone provides a clue to interpret a statement as sarcastic. The same clue doesn’t exist when you’re writing.
• Even in communities primarily shared by monolinguals, you see similar resources popping up. e.g. Portuguese speakers using “rsrs” (risos = laughs) to highlight “I’m not saying this seriously”.
• Native English speakers were a small majority in the site, around 60% of the users. (Dunno how it is now - the exodus might’ve changed demographics.) I don’t think that non-native speakers were such a huge pressure on the behaviour of the site.
• Those failures to correctly interpret a comment as sarcastic were usually fairly consistent. That doesn’t fit well with the idea of a diverse non-native demographic.