Here on Daily Kos /s is used to indicate something a member of our community posts is meant to be a snark, i.e. sarcasm not to meant to be taken seriously. If someone writes something that might be misconstrued to be serous when it is sarcasm, or in common parlance snarky, you can bet that someone will nail them on it. Hence the “offending” party sometimes has to explain what they wrote was meant as sarcasm or snark. For example, this is from the comments to my diary from yesterday. It is from the replies to the very first comment.
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Read the entire long comment and reply thread to kamachanda’s * comment (the first on my diary) which I took as an obvious snark about the Trump coffee table picture book needing to be banned, prompted here.
The comment thread lays out the pros and cons of using the /s mark. It would be helpful to read it prior to weighing in with your opinion here. Currently it has over 30 replies, some from kamachanda and a few of them mine
Sometimes I figuratively scratch my head when someone thinks that anyone writing on Daily Kos, whether a staff member, diarist, or commenter is serious about something I find obviously meant to be sarcasm. This is especially true when the person writing is a very frequent contributor to the Kos community conversation.
The most compelling argument I find to using the /s mark is to prevent right wing trolls from attributing a meaning opposite to what you intended and using it against you. But really, are any of us regular community members even minor league celebrities “worthy” of being misquoted anywhere but here on Daily Kos?
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*While kamachanda hasn’t posted any diaries since joining in October of 2016 they have favored us with over 8000 illuminating, thought provoking, and sometimes pithy comments.
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Addendum:
Other symbols for snark have been suggested instead of the simple /s, for example (from this website), but that is irrelevant to this diary since our convention is well established as using /s.
The Poll
What do you think? Please comment.