[zerostar07]

Sarcasm and humor are a big deal. They are active attempts to identify resonance with a crowd and common ground, and can be used to assess if there is a strong cultural basis in a community. In the internet it's become very hard to have cohesive communities, so sarcasm has to be labeled (perhaps hoping that it will help people learn to identify it without labels in the future - in vain, i think).

[arethuza]

"Sarcasm and humor are a big deal" - I would say practically a way of life here in the UK....

[Edit: I got a severe telling off once from an Intel lawyer for using very mild humour in a conference call.... I learned my lesson. I think in the middle of a multi hour conference call of mind numbing tedium I said 'I'm not sure what a Quad Pump AGP Port is but I want one...' - I got a bollocking for a good 15 minutes].

[joejerryronnie]

That's the man trying to keep you down. You should have made it a point in every subsequent meeting with that lawyer to ask about the progress on getting you that Quad Pump AGP Port.

[stcredzero]

In the internet it's become very hard to have cohesive communities, so sarcasm has to be labeled

Sarcasm can be culturally dependent. As a child and high schooler, I thought that my parents didn't understand sarcasm. I remember when I realized that my immigrant parents just had a different form of it than I did in grade school and high school.