Who Needs A SarcMark When Your Computer Can Just Tell You When Someone's Being Sarcastic?

from the technology-to-the-rescue dept

Fri, May 21st 2010 4:02am — Mike Masnick

Technology: the cause and the solution to all our problems. We've previously covered the attempt to create a proprietary fee-required sarcasm punctuation mark called the SarcMarc (which appears to just be a Hebrew letter), as well as its more sarcastic and open competition called the Open Sarcasm project. Clearly, the world is begging for better notification for when sarcasm occurs.

Apparently, some feel that the answer is to throw technology at the problem, rather than requiring explicit punctuation or markup. Some researchers in Israel (perhaps trying to take back the Hebrew letter the SarcMarc folks copied) have created a system that can automatically (mostly) recognize when someone's Twitter message is meant to be sarcastic (some of the time). So, go ahead and rejoice. We may soon reach the day when you will never again be fooled by missed sarcasm.

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Filed Under: sarcasm, sarcasm detector

24 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 21 May 2010 @ 4:26am

So what now?
Amazing. So Jews again prove their place in the world, and again it seems they can't cure cancer.

But why did they close the California Pizzza Kitchen? I'm still waiting for an answer there.
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Anonymous Coward, 21 May 2010 @ 5:11am

Any sarcastic comment on a forum is also followed by a couple more from people who just didn't get it. How is a computer program supposed to be able to accurately determine sarcasm when the general populous cannot?
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- Mike, 21 May 2010 @ 5:35am
  
  Re:
  Is your argument that computers cant do anything better or more accurately than a human? Hmmm... yes... please excuse me as I modify a word document in my mind :)
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Sneeje (profile), 21 May 2010 @ 5:15am

Mike, I don't think this was created for the purpose of using tech to recognize sarcasm, so much as it was created for the purpose of seeing if it was possible (I don't know, just speculating). The fields of cognitive science and artificial intelligence are mostly driven forward by small steps like this. It seems like a nice, well-bounded problem to tackle with an experiment.
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- froyo, 21 May 2010 @ 5:36am
  
  Re:
  Were you being sarcastic?
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- Peet McKimmie (profile), 21 May 2010 @ 5:54am
  
  Re:
  AFAIK it is intended for use when aggregating "Customer reviews" on sites such as Amazon, where a clearly sarcastic comment will often show up as a 5-star review to a search spider.
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  - Sneeje (profile), 21 May 2010 @ 6:59am
    
    Re: Re:
    @froyo, no, and perhaps I'm being too generous. I explored those fields in college and this was exactly the sort of thing that would be tried, simply to test out the ability of algorithms to identify linguistic complexity.
    
    But as Peet says, none of that could be true, this could have been someone's application of technology for its own sake, not for any academic reason.
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- Mike Masnick (profile), 21 May 2010 @ 12:38pm
  
  Re:
  Mike, I don't think this was created for the purpose of using tech to recognize sarcasm, so much as it was created for the purpose of seeing if it was possible
  
  I know... I was just joking. Badly, apparently. :)
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  - Sneeje (profile), 22 May 2010 @ 8:04am
    
    Re: Re:
    Sorry, I see now. I think that's on me, not you.
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  - Anonymous Coward, 23 May 2010 @ 10:23pm
    
    Re: Re:
    So, would that computer program be able to detect your sarcasm?
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Anonymous Coward, 21 May 2010 @ 6:48am

"... as well as it's more sarcastic and open competition called the Open Sarcasm project."
Extra apostrophe!
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Anonymous Coward, 21 May 2010 @ 7:16am

i never heard of these idiots until they were on techdirt. mike, are you part owner of this stuff? you of all people should know the effects of discussing them at all.
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- Anonymous Coward, 21 May 2010 @ 8:30am
  
  Re:
  I never heard of ^this^ idiot until he was on Techdirt.
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Pixelation, 21 May 2010 @ 7:22am

I guess I will have to develop undetectable sarcasm to escape the notice of our digital overlords.
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GrokIt, 21 May 2010 @ 8:32am

hmmm . .
This is an important development.

(if you can't tell when someone is being sarcastic then you have a real problem)
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Anonymous Coward, 21 May 2010 @ 8:42am

I bet someone is gonna patent this. You know, to promote innovation and all that.
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David T, 21 May 2010 @ 9:54am

Over-engineering the solution...
At the end of a sarcastic remark, the person making the comment can type, "/sarcasm" (or /s, to make it short).

Problem solved.
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Misterease, 21 May 2010 @ 10:19am

A sarcasm detector, that's a real useful invention.
(Sarcasm detector explodes)
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#captainobvious, 21 May 2010 @ 11:36am

Captain No Pants IN SPAAAACE
I thought this was about

"ICWSM – A Great Catchy Name: Semi-Supervised Recognition of Sarcastic Sentences in Online Product Reviews"

If you don't know what it is, Google it.

I'm glad Mike writes articles about the Twitterscape.
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Anonymous Coward, 21 May 2010 @ 12:54pm

Next up to solve: Poe's law! Good Luck!
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Lawrence D'Oliveiro, 21 May 2010 @ 9:18pm

Proposed Sarcasm Markup
>
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- Lawrence D'Oliveiro, 21 May 2010 @ 9:19pm
  
  Re: Proposed Sarcasm Markup
  Your comment system screwed that up. It should have been
  
  <![SARCASM[ ... this is how you do it ... ]]>
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  - Anonymous Coward, 23 May 2010 @ 10:28pm
    
    Re: Re: Proposed Sarcasm Markup
    how the heck did you manage a greater and less sign on techdirt. I've tried, even with the Html exception rules, and failed. Let me see the source
    
    < >
    
    Testing
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    - Anonymous Coward, 23 May 2010 @ 10:28pm
      
      Re: Re: Re: Proposed Sarcasm Markup
      Wow, I actually got it to work. Cool, thanks.
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