I did just remember more from English class: Verbal irony, a type of irony, fits the colloquial definition of sarcasm (“oh, just great” when something upsetting happens). (According to https://literarydevices.net/verbal-irony/ sarcasm is verbal irony used to mock or insult. Don’t 100% remember what they said about sarcasm vs verbal irony in English class.) The irony being talked about here is situational irony. It seems people colloquially use “irony” for “situational irony” and get upset when it gets used to refer to the sarcastic type of “verbal irony”

The people who legitimately hold the view that it’s just a word might be a little frustrated at the small bit of extra work of needing to change their scripts or code that uses those words to the new words, but otherwise no big deal. But a lot of “it’s just a word bro” folks actually do care and just like to pretend they do not for clout, because caring is for lame losers and being able to falsely present yourself as a previously-neutral party now moved to care by how stupid something is can hold a lot of weight when convincing others and make you feel cool.

It always mildly annoyed that we call them “black people” and “white people” because “black people” are more brown than black, and “white people” are more tan than white. And brown can be viewed as a shade of tan. Not very descriptive.

Hi, American checking in. I was taught in English class in high school that irony is an ambulance running people over, not just sarcasm. I do agree that colloquially (and I am probably guilty of it too) we Americans use the word “irony” to talk about things being presented in a non-genuine and earnest manner, to talk about sarcasm and snark and parody.

I half worry for society and half feel that as much as I feel bad about my coding abilities, I’m better than people who never actually bother learning the concepts themselves and fully outsource their homework to AI and that population is growing. It’s a low bar but more people are failing to clear it every day!

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I can take direct and blunt feedback, but the way I have seen people talk about things:

[projectname] is dogshit

makes me terrified to open repos. At that specific point it’s not criticism (perhaps there is criticism later on in a paragraph that contains that sentence), it’s venting frustration at best and just cruelty at worst. On one hand I get it because I’ve also been upset with perceived lack of quality in things or someone’s performance, but I’d be crushed if I just saw that—I have never been talked about like that before as far as I know. I can handle “your code is bad because X”. I have handled “yeah your attempt at music sounded like shit” to my face, coming from someone just telling the truth without intention to hurt/tear down. But from strangers online, whose intentions I do not know…

On the other hand I have been told both in-person and here on programming.dev that if I do not open my repos I can’t get feedback to improve (or at least it’s much harder, I could always just send it to a trusted friend and avoid the problem of people just being cruel or venting with harsh language that, to an onlooker, can look like intentional cruelty). And I just saw in the comments that I can poison LLM training, so…

I have a feeling this is satire, and I’m usually the type of person to miss the joke and think it’s genuine

Feels weird reading this as the only single woman programmer in my friend group who likes men

Hey, congratulations on the employment!

That’s a bit difficult because I already go into anything from The Onion knowing it’s intended to be humorous/satirical.

What I lack in ability to recognize satire or outright deception from posts written online, I make up for by reading comment threads: seeing people accuse things of being fake, seeing people defend it as true, seeing people point out the entire intention of a website is satire, seeing people who had a joke go over their heads get it explained… relying on the collective hivemind to help me out where I am deficient. It’s not a perfect solution at all, especially since people can judge wrong—I bet some “omg so fake” threads were actually real, and some astroturf-type things written to influence others without real experience behind it got through as real.

You are right about the thespian thing, but when you watch TV/film/theatre everyone is in on the “joke” and we all know they’re not really falling in love, getting murdered, or whatever dramatic happening. I’m not sure if OOP is just trying to entertain and expects everyone to realize they’re joking, which would stick them on the thespian side, or if they have other motives. But hey, interesting point to bring up!

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Thanks!

I really wish people did not do this. This isn’t something I was ever taught to look for, and I like to think I got a good education. I was taught to make sure my source is credible, to consider biases and spin and what things are facts and what is just opinion, but I wasn’t taught to look for a lot of deception people call out online. But I guess I have to live with this and gain the skill to look for deception. Genuinely, thanks for helping me, since I don’t think I ever would have figured out what raises “fake” flags in most peoples’ heads on my own.

Thanks!

I’m entirely too trusting and would like to know what about the phrasing tips you off that it’s fictional. Back on Reddit I remember so many claims about posts being fake and I was never able to tease out what distinguished the “omg fake! r/thathappened” posts from the ones that weren’t accused of that, and I feel this is a skill I should be able to have on some level. Although taking an amusing post that wasn’t real as real doesn’t always have bad consequences.

But I mostly asked because I’m curious about the weird extra width on letters.

Is that what the weird extra width on some letters is, artifacts from some AI generating the post?

!hare@programming.dev

I could swear there was such an add-on that was this but non-NSFW, but maybe I’m misremembering.

Okay, everyone knows guns are literal weapons. Not everyone has the time to look into things and develop an anticorporate opinion to the point simply using a service is a loaded weapon and simply using it is cause enough for “no sympathy, sucks to be you!” when they have trouble with it. Maybe this might make them change their minds eventually, but even if it doesn’t… this seems a bit more blaming the victim. Get angry at the corporation, not the person who wasn’t born believing corporations bad. If I fail to lock my door, that is probably unwise of me, but everyone should be more mad at the thief for stealing from me in the first place.