Sarcasm

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I've been told I'm too sarcastic and hurt people's feelings. Maybe I don't use it with enough subtlety. I know I pick up on it relatively often, but how would you know if you're missing it? How can you be aware of not being aware? This is a real issue for me, because how can I know if I lack understanding only based on my own experience? Maybe people are being sarcastic to me all the time and I'm only getting it 10% of the time. It certainly felt like that in school anyway, like everyone got the joke but me.... because I was the joke.

I pretty much understand sarcasm, although I had more trouble with it when I was younger.

I don't use sarcasm much myself, although I use it occasionally, but only as a joke.

Sarcasmogrified topic

I am always getting sarcasm confused with cynicism. Either way, I understand literally.

It goes two ways for me.
Not only do I fail to recognize the use of sarcasm by other people in about 50% of cases,
my attempts at sarcasm are almost always misinterpreted as being genuine expressions.
I guess I don't do the things that are characteristic of the concept, like changing my tone of voice or the look on my face. I plow forward with my usual blank face and monotonous voice, and nobody notices things like sarcasm, humor, joy, etc.

When I read that people with Asperger's have a hard time with sarcasm, I thought "wait a minute....I love sarcasm! I use it myself!" I can usually tell when people are being sarcastic, although there are times when what the person just said sounds reasonable. Even then, I don't take what they say at face value, I just need to stop for a second and try to process what was said ("wait....are you being sarcastic?"). This becomes even harder online, without facial cues and tone of voice to help out. On another website I belong to, there was a discussion about "What was the last documentary you watched?". My wife posted "This Is Spinal Tap", which I immediately recognized as being sarcastic. But then someone else posted "The Blair Witch Project", and based on this person's posting history (he's a little on the slow side), I replied with "I can't tell if you're messing with us or if you actually think that was a documentary...?". Based on how the discussion went from there, I'm still not 100% convinced he doesn't believe it's an actual documentary.

I can detect sarcasm easily, but I do have the literal image of what they said in my head. If that makes sense.

I probably get overly sarcastic with people I work with. Responses such as, "You called me all the way over to your desk to ask me that?" or "Geez, haven't you fixed that yet?" But they have learned my style and know that I don't mean anything personal by it. Actually, the guy that I do it the most to was the one who started doing it to me first.