sarcasm

How to generate your own Steve Jobs e-mail

There are those who have. And those who have not. Regretfully, the majority are those who wish they had.

Yes, ever since Apple CEO Steve Jobs began to e-mail selected customers about selected issues, a whole world of humanity has wailed: "Why not me? Why that strange Scandinavian?"

These cries are being heard all around the world, but answers have not been readily forthcoming.

So some highly caring people at eSarcasm decided that this suffering could not go on. Eschewing all other tasks, they sat down to create an automatic Steve Jobs e-mail generator.

Now you, me, and … Read more

The 404 595: Where we make up our decision (podcast)

As usual, today's Friday episode of The 404 Podcast covers a random variety of topics, including the next Spider-man film, a software program that recognizes sarcasm, and our favorite subject: Chinese people.

We start things off with a controversial editorial that suggests the next Spider-Man should be played by anyone but another white guy. Back in January, Sony announced that Tobey Maguire will not reprise his role in the next Spidey movie.

There's already a list of possible candidates, but many superfans are suggesting a non-white Peter Parker to fill the red and blue boots.

In fact, Donald Glover … Read more

Algorithm spots sarcasm--suuuuure it does

I'm just sooo happy to be sitting here reading through an eight-page PDF on algorithms. Seriously. Nothing in this world makes me happier than poring over phrases like "detailed results of the 5-fold cross validation of various components of the algorithm are summarized in Table 2."

If a new sarcasm-detecting algorithm out of Jerusalem's Hebrew University really knows what it's doing, it should be able to tell that I was just kidding there. Yeah, right. No, actually I was.

After an exhaustive look at word, syntax, and punctuation patterns in written user-generated content, the researchers came up with SASI (PDF), or Semi-supervised Algorithm for Sarcasm Identification, which can recognize sarcasm in online sentences and assign each sentence to a sarcastic class (not all sarcasm is created equal, of course). Meager attempts at sarcasm aside, this is a pretty novel idea that could possibly aid those pure souls who lack a sarcasm and irony meter--and could even have commercial applications.

One idea here is that automated sarcasm recognition could help improve review summarization and opinion-mining systems, since the inherently subtle and ambiguous nature of sarcasm sometimes makes it hard even for humans to decide whether a comment is sarcastic. According to the researchers--Oren Tsur, Dmitry Davidov, and Ari Rappoport--studies of user preferences suggest some consumers find sarcastic reviews biased and less helpful.

The Hebrew University team--which will present its findings next week at the International Conference for Weblogs and Social Media in Washington, D.C.--closely examined some 66,000 Amazon reviews for 120 products including books, music players, digital cameras, camcorders, GPS devices, e-readers, game consoles, and mobile phones.

Identifying cues common to sarcasm in online communication (excessive use of capital letters as in: "Well you know what happened. ALMOST NOTHING HAPPENED!!!"; puns; and explicit contradictions), the researchers created a complex algorithm in which a small number of sarcastic sentences "teach" the software to recognize sarcasm. They say the software precisely identifies sarcastic sentences 77 percent of the time--no small feat given the elusive nature of sarcasm, its intractable relationship to cultural context, and differences between the spoken and written varieties. … Read more

Lost in translation

My sister is a big fan of saying something unbelievably mean, followed by an immediate "Just kidding!" Sometimes the "Just kidding" doesn't come quickly enough. If I had the sarcasm algorithm built into my brain, it might really improve my sibling relationship.

It is funny how much meaning gets lost in translation on the Internet, especially when it comes to humor or levity. I was behind the idea of the SarcMarc, a new form of punctuation that conveys sarcasm. I just don't think people will upgrade their keyboard to use it.

It all makes … Read more

Oh goody!!!!!! A punctuation mark for sarcasm

There were many people, quite a few in America, who were excited, delighted, even positively beaming when some clever cove created that smiley colon/parenthesis thing that is now the universal sign of a written smile.

:) That's the one. The one that is sometimes written as ":0" or ":-)" or, for a smiling wink, ";)." Or even, and this is far beyond my intellectual galaxy, "J". Does that signify "JOKINGYOUMORON!!!!!!!!"? I think that it does.

All these symbols have been such great successes in bringing people together and making them … Read more

The science of sarcasm

Unlike irony which ruins everything, sarcasm is not only fun, it's also scientific! As reported in the NY Times, a new study explains where sarcasm resides in your brain.

What you may not have realized is that perceiving sarcasm, the smirking put-down that buries its barb by stating the opposite, requires a nifty mental trick that lies at the heart of social relations: figuring out what others are thinking. Those who lose the ability, whether through a head injury or the frontotemporal dementias afflicting the patients in Dr. Rankin's study, just do not get it when someone says … Read more