Charles on… anything that comes along

Charlie Brooker tweaks the nose of everyone who can’t understand the <irony> tag. (Obviously, it’s invisible in most browsers.)

Well, something like that.

Reminds me of Andrew’s piece - perfectly entitled “Are you trying to be funny? If so, check this box”.

Which included this:

“I want a direct statement on how we are intended to interpret this podcast. And then I’m going to make my decision,” he added, magisterially.

Here at El Reg, we’ve tried to address this very issue before with our proposed Color Coding system, more than four years ago.

To avoid any misunderstandings, we suggested that we’d clearly indicate the intention of any ambiguous, potentially humorous writing. And it looked like this:

• Droll insinuation will be sage green
• Mild sarcasm will be burgundy
• Smarminess will be ultramarine
• Irony will be lavender
• Flippancy will be sunflower orange
• Biting sarcasm will be pillar box red
• Humour liable to cause offence will be in an insipid yellow which you can only read when you highlight it

While out-and-out jokes would clearly be tagged with a warning graphic:

The idea was shelved after accessibility issues were raised.

What, like Macheads wouldn’t be able to spot the joke?

These posts might be related (the database thinks..):
• Unintended consequenceRSS (9 September 2004; score: 35.07%)
• So howcome we don't hear about citizen doctors, citizen lawyers, citizen architects... (10 May 2008; score: 34.17%)
• Spam: a retrovirus that infects any online input (21 August 2004; score: 30.44%)