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December 18, 2006

humor

Sarcasm is lost on the net, even in video form

Posted Dec. 18, ’06, 6:36 AM PT by Derik DeLong
Category | Apple » Humor

Pogue I can understand that sometimes it’s hard to detect sarcasm in text, but you’d think that in video it’d be much clearer. If you didn’t detect the sarcasm in David Pogue’s “Vista did not copy Mac OS X” video, you’re not alone. Pogue has received some rather harsh rebuttals.

But a few people have already written me, saying, “You must be the dumbest man in America. You think that’s a DIFFERENCE? Who the @#*#*#** cares if they use a different term? It’s EXACTLY THE SAME THING!”

Of course that actually was the point of the video. What’s the five letter word describing an email to point out to Pogue that there is no difference between the various things he compared? Irony. I can’t think of any way that he could have tweaked his delivery, except for maybe winking.


8 Comments

George said:

I've often thought that HTML could seriously benefit from a tag. And maybe a tag, tag, and others that would more directly indicate emotion than just emphasis.

December 18, 2006 7:17 AM
DarthMac said:

If they didn't get the sarcasm they'd probably assume the wink was a tic.

He could have turned the monitor 180 degrees to make the point about Spotlight but some people still wouldn't have got it.

December 18, 2006 7:19 AM
Chris said:

Ok, I hold my hands up and say I was dumb enough not to realise it was a joke video.

Now I'm a bit of a fan of this guy's humour to I.T. reviews.

December 18, 2006 7:37 AM
Boz Kay Author Profile Page said:

Absolutely Brilliant. This video is good value.
Laughed hard the first time I saw this.
And now I'm laughing again, hearing that people thought he was serious.

December 18, 2006 7:48 AM
Dave said:

A couple years ago I was reading the letters to the editor for some magazine (why I was reading the letters to the editor of a magazine I don't normally read, I can't recall). It would seem that they pulled an April Fool's joke a couple issues earlier and claimed that Toyota had purchased the rights to rename Detroit, MI to Toyotatown or some such. Half the responses were outraged, the other half thought the joke was too obvious and should have been more subtle.

December 18, 2006 8:14 AM
Fletcher said:

The problem with posting sarcasm on the net is that it will be distributed without the context that makes the sarcasm clear. A transcript of the video or a snipped from the video can be easily misunderstood.

For example, the original MacUser post on the video above didn't contain any clue that the content was sarcastic. I don't read the NYT Web site since they started charging for content, so I didn't see the video.

I was left to think that David Pogue had perhaps lost his mind. Nice to know he hasn't.

December 18, 2006 8:53 AM
Derik Author Profile Page said:

I did mark the original post with the "Humor" category.

December 18, 2006 1:16 PM
GCarden said:

The Internet: a global idiot village. Go Pogue.

December 18, 2006 10:28 PM

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