this post was submitted on 21 May 2026
314 points (94.1% liked)
Technology
84861 readers
3837 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
/gen means genuine, it’s a tone indicator. Another one you might see is /s for sarcastic or /j for joking
What are we doing here?
idk ask the internet, I'm just trying to be helpful
It's just strange to me that communication is breaking down so much that I need to basically explain the joke. Soon I'll be saying "please clap."
To be fair Poe's law is a pretty common problem in internet communication. Obviously ambiguity of intent is pretty easily avoided with good writing but it's also convenient for a lot of people to be able to dodge that with a few relatively standardized characters. Although I can agree in the sense that it often feels like a lazy fix for otherwise bad jokes or dialogue, too often I see something in the vein of "WE NEED TO BLOW UP ORPHANAGES!!! /j" and because there's a tone indicator in there it somehow manages to write off the lack of actual quality.
👏👏👏👏👏👏👏