Sarcasm vs. Sincerity [View all]

[cthulu2016]

You want to make a short post online, or send a short text. But in our sarcasm rich world a brief statement may mean what it says, or mean the opposite...

To denote sincerity (as opposed to sarcasm) we can soften the statement. Ironically, to show we really mean it we can make the statement less declarative.

Huey Lewis is awesome.
Huey Lewis is pretty good.

Without the information of tone and gesture to go by the first is as likely as not to be sarcastic. The second seems sincere because it is too moderate to function as sarcasm, so it must be straightforward.

(I was thinking about this because I wanted to praise a post and found myself softening my praise so that it could not be taken for sarcasm.)