Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/12/14/tone-indicators-and-the-ever-evolving-quest-to-clarify-what-were-saying-online.html
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I try to let my writing speak for itself, but sometimes find the /s tag useful. The others, not so much – I can tell what they are without the indicators. Based on the behaviour I’ve observed, I can see some of them being abused by JAQ-off, “just joking”, and other creepy tr0lls.
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There is nothing Darwinian about it.
/li /g /nsx
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All discourse trends towards regex
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Interesting. It’ll be fun to see how/where they get adopted.
I don’t have too much concern about this potential issue:
Because if people tried to use them that way, I think the rightful response would be to tell them that what they said isn’t funny and STFU.
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Well that will make everything clear. /s
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I think I’m going to start using the “genuine” indicator ironically just to fuck up the system.
/sx
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Hot. Keep going. Almost there…
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/uj (unjerk) is a good one to indicate a serious response in a circle jerk post.
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or from the original sed|perl:
/m Treat the string being matched against as multiple lines.
/s Treat the string as single line.
/i Do case-insensitive pattern matching.
/x Extend your pattern’s legibility by permitting whitespace and comments.
/p Preserve the string matched position.
/n Prevent the grouping metacharacters () from capturing.
/g Globally match the pattern repeatedly in the string
/u Sets the character set to Unicode.
/
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Great. So not only do I have to look up what notations like /c mean when someone uses it, but I also have to Google the meaning of the meaning of said notation.
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I have a hard time accepting any explanation that doesn’t leave open the possibility that this is just the freshest attempt at age-gating communication online. Academics giving this the full anthropology treatment has overtones of spending grant money making their graduate students help them keep up with their childrens’ communications styles combined with a touching futile attempt to weaken the barrier through sheer outreach.
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Gotta feed the tenure beast somehow.
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Like anything with spoken language, and I consider online communications much more analogous to spoken rather than written language, I don’t think you can impose signifiers like that, or any rules. Just like that author’s tilde idea for sarcasm didn’t take off but /s did, so there will be other indications of tone that develop naturally. Indeed they already have 
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These are completely worthless.
/s (or reasonable facsimile thereof)
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I generally think I can, too, but I’m not diagnosed neuro-divergent. Are you?
I don’t think all of those listed will become common, but it’s an interesting thing we’ll see unfold. I’m a tad bummed seeing posters here disparaging the very idea because it’s not something they need.
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For most of my posts i feel like what i write stands for itself. Sometimes i may come across as more annoyed or negative than i intend but for the most part i’m ok with that, the only time i need clarification on my tone is sarcasm or when i play devil’s advocate on something i don’t support or believe for the sake of discussion (though there are certainly some topics i refuse to play/entertain that role)
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Neuro-divergent people have trouble with verbal sarcasm for a variety of reasons that have less impact in written communication (they might do even better recognising those patterns without having to process facial expressions and vocal tone).
Either way, I can see how these tags (and also emojis) could go from fun additions now and then to being crutches for lazy writing or, as noted above, being abused by bad actors. My personal opinion won’t really change things, though.
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I’ll stick with 
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