Archive for February, 2010
NICE ASS¡ underwear
Today’s featured Authorized Open Sarcasm Wear of the day: NICE ASS¡ boxer shorts, hip huggers, and bikinis. Spread the revolution with sass!
This and more available in the Official Open Sarcasm Store.
notes from the first weekend of the revolution
Good morning, comrades, and happy Monday¡
Start your week with a taste of punctuational freedom by catching up on our progress since the momentous First Thursday of the Revolution.
I. Progress in the Twitter Theater
Highlights from the battles fought by the Sarcasm Liberation Army on the front lines of Twitter:
- Comrade @PaladinPhila quoted from the manifesto.
- Comrades @Msardina and @KyleHase spread the words of our leadership to their followers.
- Comrade @gilfer promised us a gold medal in sarcasm.
- Comrade @naseeral—one of the longest-standing members of the Salvation Liberation Army—shared the sweet euphoria of punctuational freedom: I have started using #opensarcasm in my sarcastic little notes. The feeling is invigorating.
- Comrade @pidster provided instructions on punctuating sarcasm to his friend @whittlechris.
- Comrade @grimmlock tweeted: Open Sarcasm Manifesto¡ http://ow.ly/195VF I’ll be damned, I did not know this existed. I just saved 2 bucks¡
- Comrade @jpmarcotte showed true revolutionary spirit, writing: “Bah, nobody would want to use something that’s already free and almost universally usable¡”
- Our newest recruit to the Sarcasm Liberation Army, Comrade @lowrobb shared a link to coverage of our movement and later recomended that his Twitter followers follow @OpenSarcasm for information on achieving punctuational freedom and shared some of our words with them. Thank you, comrade, for your heartfelt enthusiasm and support!
- And Comrade @tonygil tweeted his support after we told him of the alternative to SarcMark®.
II. Coverage from Mighty Red Pen
The self-described “grammar goddess” who pens the blog Mighty Red Pen covered our epic struggle against the chains of punctuational capitalism, saying:
The folks at Open Sarcasm, on the other hand, have a real problem with the SarcMark®. They have a whole website, with a manifesto and so on, decrying the concept of a licensed punctuation mark for identifying sarcasm.
III. Progress in the Turkish Theater
Finally, the revolution made considerable progress in the Turkish Theater with a supportive article from the well-respected Turkish Journal.
Snippet of an auto-translation from google:
And finally, in the age of the Internet into our lives trying to sign
sarkazm itself remained in the middle of a war sarkastik. ‘Money
sarkazma no’ action starts a group of Internet users anarchist,
Ethiopia alphabet, which is the opposite of sarkazm exclamation mark,
exclamation mark in the shape of ”¡” ”universal, free,
classless,” declared the fused sarkazm exclamation. who founded a
website called ”opensarcasm.org” activists, published ‘open sarkazm
manifesto’ to the buying and the ”alphabet” of capitalism started a
fight. And those who use licensed exclamation mark, exclamation to
join the revolution, equal and free for all punctuation marks are
invited to establish a world. Initiated action to protect the
exclamation Sarkazm communist to a capitalist way to finance their
WRITTEN began selling t-shirts.Some observers, the ‘Open sarcasm’ group’s manifesto is not certain
they were serious sarkastik pointed out ‘that’ The world needs a real
exclamation sarkazm comments are made. Let’s look at the battle of
capitalist sarkazm exclamation of sarkazm socialist sarkazm of
exclamation will win?
Of course the sarkazm socialist sarkazm of exclamation will win! This week, our struggle to bring egalitarian punctuation for sarcasm to the people continues. Join us!
notes from the front lines of the revolution: day 2
Comrades! Yesterday proved even brighter for our movement than the first day of action.
The day began with two decisive victories in our struggle to make sarcasm free:
I. Open Sarcasm First Used in the Wild
Our first evidence of Open Sarcasm used was found in this comment of a two-year-old fantasy football forum post. Our leaders are perplexed by this unexpected placement of the first use of Open Sarcasm, but thrilled to see the punctuation taking hold. See the people’s punctuation in use:
Bonus – 02:15pm Feb 17, 2010 GMT (#3 of 5)
This worked well¡
Bonus – 02:17pm Feb 17, 2010 GMT (#4 of 5)
Apparently & iexcl ; (sans spaces) is the real SarcMark, btw.
http://opensarcasm.org/
I was just testing it worked on the previous post. Obviously, I was in no way implying that this competition and series of threads by FantasyFootballEd was anything less than a brilliant venture¡
We applaud Comrade Bonus for his participation and hope he will continue to battle for the freedom of sarcasm.
On to our second major victor of the day:
I. Techdirt Reports on the Battle at Hand
Comrade Mike Masnick of Techdirt posted this fascinating analysis of the ongoing fight. Snip:
[...] Sarcasm wars have now broken out. In response to the closed and proprietary SarcMark, another group has launched the Open Sarcasm project that is, instead, pushing a version of an upside down exclamation point to indicate sarcasm — based on the already in existence Ethiopian punctuation mark for sarcasm (which is why it’s already a part of unicode). I have no clue if they’re being serious or sarcastic. Which is why the world needs more sarcasm markers.
Still, whether or not any of this is serious, it actually does show how betting on proprietary solutions can often come back to bite you, as more open, cheaper, and more flexible solutions pop up to fill in the gap. So, yeah, to SarcMark, good luck with that project.
An intriguing discussion has taken hold in the comments on Comrade Mike’s post. Highlights include:
- An Anonymous Comrade’s comment: Long live the SarcMark®¡
- Comrade Martin Cohn’s comment: Attention downtrodden masses of the Proleteriat nerds yearning to break the chains of your Capitalist masters!¡ Alt-0161 will enter the inverted question mark and subvert the running dog scheme to pry the lordly sum of $1.99 from your pocket.
- Comrade Marcus Carab’s comment: When you “buy” the SarcMark you get an image version that you can insert into text, and also various special apps that try to add it to your Blackberry or whatever, and come with lengthy instructions.
The Open Sarcasm page is actually a fun read—it points out just how deluded the SarcMark is. It took a long time to fully draft the Unicode Specification, and the whole point of it was to make sure that it could include all characters. Then this guy comes along with, apparently, no knowledge of linguistics, orthography, typography or anything and tries to invent a proprietary character as a damn plug-in. I am assuming that the “inventor” had the thought “maybe there should be a punctuation mark for sarcasm” one day (and what regular internet conversationalist hasn’t had that thought before?) and for some misguided reason believed he could capitalize on it.
Thank you, comrades of Techdirt, for your support in this fight!
These two early victories weren’t our only progress of the day. The movement also:
III. Made Significant Gains in the Twitter Theater
Highlights:
- Comrade @jessewilkins tweeted: Loving the Open Sarcasm Manifesto and approach. ¡ is the symbol, it’s already in Unicode, and I need it!
- And his friend @jen_walkertag repliedI want a piece of whatever Sarcasm action I can get. T-Shirt: “Sarcasm Society: Like we need your support”.
[note: T-shirts and other Authorized Open Sarcasm Wear are available in the Official Open Sarcasm Store] - Comrade @leomrtns quoted from the Manifesto
- Comrade @kennyrosenberg let us know that he “is glad that now there is an open solution for indicating sarcasm ¡”
We’ve added these and other key supporters to our Sarcasm Liberation Army Twitter List. @ us if you’re ready to join the ranks.
IV. Saw Another Blog Post and References in the Wild
Comrade “the oracle” at Locker Gnome linked to the earlier Techdirt article, adding:
The plan [SarcMark] only had a couple of drawbacks. The first was, it had to be a cooperative effort. The SarcMark had to be bought in pairs to be useful; the receiver had to have it already available on their machine. The second part was the cost factor—in today’s marketplace, the salability of a single character for nearly $4, plus the difficulty with getting the recipient to cooperate to get your message across is less than optimal.
[...]
Yeah, that little problem with the trying to put one over on people as the SarcMark being an original work could also be a bit of a snag.
Over on Flickr, Comerade Jakerome added mention of Open Sarcasm to a two-year-old thread he created for the deliberation of this very matter: The appropriate denotion of sarcasm in the Flickr community.
What a fine day for the revolution! Let this energy guide us into battle today! Sarcasm must be free! Sarcasm WILL be free!
notes from the front lines of the revolution: day 1
Yesterday, comrades, the sun shone brightly on the revolution! The day started with remarkable progress in the European Theater.
Comrade naseeral of Sweden tweeted:
Haha! @opensarcasm lanserar gratisalternativ till #sarcmark: ett upp- och nervänt utropstecken. ¡
Which roughly translates to:
Haha! @ opensarcasm introduces free alternative to #sarcmark: an up-and inverted exclamation point. ¡
And his countryman Comrade DMRsweden soon chimed in:
Detta har jag längtat efter¡ Screw you #sarcmark! http://opensarcasm.org/ (tack för tipset @naseeral)
Which Google translates as:
That I have longed for¡ Screw you #sarcmark! http://opensarcasm.org/ (thanks for the tip @ naseeral)
Well put, our Swedish friends.
Later in the day, Comrade Jared Newman of Technologizer brought word of our humble movement to his readers:
A month ago, a company called SarcMark began selling a special punctuation of the same name, intended to denote Sarcasm. As some of our commenters pointed out, punctuation shouldn’t cost money, and SarcMark was charging $2 for the privilege.
Now, a group called Open Sarcasm is staging a protest to crush SarcMark and replace it with an upside-down exclamation mark (¡), which text fields already recognize and doesn’t cost a dime.
A day of great progress for the freeing of sarcasm, indeed! Today, our struggle continues.
Welcome to the Open Sarcasm Revolution
Open Sarcasm is a global revolutionary movement driven by the abiding, fundamental belief that sarcasm must be free. To that end, we bring you the Open Sarcasm Point (¡) and the Open Sarcasm Manifesto. Our goal is to free sarcasm from the chains of the capitalists who wish to charge you for your wit.
Join the Sarcasm Liberation Army by purchasing Authorized Open Sarcasm Wear from the Official Open Sarcasm Store, or by making a donation to support the cause.*
You can also send us an electronic missive in the revolutionary spirit: jointherevolution <at> opensarcasm <dot> org
Sarcasmists of the world, unite!
* Please note: Open Sarcasm is NOT a Non-Profit or a Not-for-Profit Organization. We happen to be unprofitable, but we are not a charity. Donations are accepted to defray the costs of web hosting and domain registration and are not tax-deductible.
