General Discussion

I'm autistic and I always have disliked tone tags a bit sorry D:

It just makes more sense to me to just clarify with regular words if it feels necessary to clarify.

Actually practicing how to communicate clearly on the internet translates better into communicating clearly in the real world, for me.

I'm okay with tone tags but I don't understand most of them sadly :( like I know the basic ones like /j and /srs, but I still have no idea what /lh means even though it was explained to me at least two times. I'm just. not good at it

As an autistic person with rather severe social anxiety I actually find tonetags to be pretty beneficial and I have quite a good understanding of them. I have to admit I was rather confused when I first saw them in use but I struggle to read tone over text so I find them rather handy aha

I usually only use /lh, /gen, /hj and /j because I feel like those are the more well-known ones but I do occasionally use others as well

I'm rather surprised at the amount of people who find them hard to understand or dislike them though - I see them almost everywhere nowadays online and a lot of folk I've seen find them beneficial so this is new to me lol

Older autistic here and honestly I just find them very confusing. It's extremely rare I see them (I didn't even know they had a name) and the same thing can have several different meanings. /s to me means sarcasm, not sincere but they are never things I use anyway, I just make it plain in my writing what I mean.

i am autistic and i don't really like them much. i understand most of their meanings, but oftentimes when they're used on me it just feels a little bit infantilizing when i would've understood the tone of the message perfectly fine without the tag.

not saying tone tags themselves are infantilizing (it just feels that way) or people who use them are malicious at all, i know its with good intentions but to me personally i just don't like it. i also tend to clarify my tone with words if the need arises

i've been in online spaces that often misused or were 'passive-aggressive' with tone tags (or outright lied about their tone) so i also just have negative association w them because of that

tl;dr i think they can be useful when a statement is truly ambiguous or easily misinterpreted, but i think they're patronizing or disingenuous when used excessively

my thoughts:

I have always used /s for sarcasm or i just write "jk" or "im kidding" if i said something in jest

i find that when people add /pos or /gen to the end of a statement, it rubs me the wrong way because now i'm asking myself, "how could this have been interpreted negatively? why would this statement be used negatively? should i be suspicious now that this person might have actually been saying this sarcastically?"

it feels... disingenuous in a way? because i usually see it at the end of a statement that could only possibly be interpreted positively.

i feel like they have a use, but that utility can easily be manipulated. just because someone is using tone tags, it doesn't mean that they're being honest.

they can be useful if it's a very ambiguous statement and if you're talking to a group of people that you're not familiar with. like if a statement can be easily misinterpreted, it can be helpful.

even when talking with friends who know me, i might say something that might be read as sarcasm but i'm actually being honest. but i don't write "/gen," i write "i'm being serious" or "but actually though"

is it more effort than typing /gen? yeah, but my peers and i weren't using tone tags when we were growing up online and we still don't use them now.

or if i comment about something in a way that could be perceived as negative, i'd add "... but in a good way." for people who use tone tags, they would use /pos in that situation.

(for example, "the thing you just shared looks like my cat after he just took a bath, but in a good way." sure, /pos is faster, but if it aint broke, why fix it?)

i do always read /pos as "piece of doo-doo" though and have to mentally correct myself lol

i understand that communication evolves over time so i'm not anti-tone tags. clearly they exist because they're useful for some people.

from what i can see, the members of Flight Rising skew toward older ages, so i don't see them used often here. i see them frequently on sites like Goatlings.

edit: and this is more about me than it is about the people who use tone tags, but sometimes when someone uses tone tags when talking to me, i feel like they're implying that i'm stupid lol. i typically take things at face value, so you don't need to add /pos or /gen to something. even if it could be interpreted negatively, i have enough experience to know that the person is probably making a lighthearted joke. why? because most people aren't trying to be mean. but that's exactly why it comes back to being a "me-problem." people are just trying to be clear/helpful and they're not insulting my intelligence lol

i use tone tags, i usually need them mainly if something is a joke since i have trouble telling tone otherwise, i am autistic and like using them sometimes especially if i think what i'm saying would be confusing for other people to read tone-wise :D

I've gotten in trouble for saying this before [and called a bunch of mean names, including abelist over it] but I truly dislike tone tags.

If I get a message from someone I don't know that clearly has tone tags I'll usually ignore it because if I write back 9/10 times I get a nasty message saying they couldn't understand my reply because I didn't use tone tags back. Same thing for forum replies, sadly.

A case where the few who are insistent that everyone should use them and those who don't are abelist and whatever else have ruined it for me. Also if I gotta Google whatever you've attached to your message then chances are I'm gonna roll my eyes about it, though that goes for any slang these days because as much as I hate to be the old grump about the younger generation it seems 50/50 on if I get it [ie rizz is understandable] or if I don't [why are you calling them glizzies? it's a hot dog] and I'm just....not gonna communicate well with people I need to have a whole separate dictionary to understand.