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by vjjsejj 856 days ago
It really can’t be this hard to understand such basic sarcasm?

Or I’m actually the one doing that here (and your comment is sarcastic as well)?

2 comments

In this case, the sarcasm is intended to confuse, and with some readers it achieves a little more confusion than intended.

kamma could have written something like "the EU should solve <really difficult problems> before concerning itself with <simpler problenm>" but that would have made clear that the really difficult problems are really difficult. The sarcasm is rhetorical device to distract the readers so they won't pay attention to the different levels of difficulty. Handwaving, basically, and the handwaving was a little too strong and distracted some readers too much.

Do you really think so? We know the problems are difficult and won't be fixed as quickly as censored DNS could be deployed.

That's why we want attention on the hard problems instead of million small insignificant non-problems.

Bit of a bummer for those of use whose daily work attaining world peace, ending hunger or one of those other big problems. That includes me. You?
Not my daily work, but try to help where I can
Ever heard of Poe's law?

If you've been long enough on internet forums, you'll see every inanity you can think of as "of course it's sarcasm" being presented sincerely.

Also, I've read too many posts/comments of the "the world has never been better" variety (usually citing Hans Rosling or some tech-bro favorite like Pinker), that sincerely push similar ideas of the state of the world in 2024.

According to HN, San Francisco is a dreamland, and according to Reddit, it's full of crackheads and inequality.

It's really possible to not be exposed to war, crime, poverty, hunger if you are living in a closed tech-bubble (which is more likely on Hackernews).

I think about Googlers in Zurich for example, or a VP @ Apple, they can really be disconnected from the other parts of the world.