the /hj tone indicator is worse than useless 

I never want to see another definition of /hj ever again

To me, ‘half joking’ is that awkward thing someone says that everyone is laughing about while giving each other a worried side eye.

My problem with /hj is that my brain always interprets it as "handjob" regardless of context.

reject tone indicators embrace one word in brackets (threatening)

this video has been a fascinating revelation of how neurotypical I actually was.

I swear 80% of the time someone uses half-joking, they're throwing the idea out there to see what other people think and then decide whether they're being serious or not

I've always interpreted "half-joking" as "I'm joking unless you agree with me, in which case I'm being serious."

this video is very good. not only did you achieve its main purpose - to convince me why /hj is so bad - but also, you incidentally helped me figure out why I have some complicated feelings about “xD” (it’s because it conveys sincerity! i am autistic too and almost pathologically sincere, and that’s scary online! holy shit!)

Genuinely only now learning that /hj does not stand for hand job

I’ve honestly always interpreted /hj as a shorter way to say “for legal reasons This is a joke”

Do not use tone indicators, take everything seriously and get into fights with strangers online.

The fact that 2/3rds of this videos comments are something along the lines of "I don't agree, here's what I think it means: [personal subjective definition]" is saying a lot.

Your video perfectly explains the issues I have with tone indicators as an autistic person. I just think it's more productive communication to, like you said, write out the whole word, rephrase stuff, or just clarify your meaning if someone is confused about it I also wish people would stop assuming every single ND person uses them. I don't like people using tone indicators at me, and it makes me me feel condescended to when people assume I need them when I didn't ask. "Don't assume what accesibility aids someone needs" is a pretty basic principle of interacting with disabled people

I want a Death Note episode where we see Kira's thought process as he struggles trying to interpret "im going to buy an absurd amount of orange juice /hj" after L wrote that on his Onlyfans page

People in the comments are explaining how they use/interpret /hj, when the whole point of the video is that the problem with /hj is that everyone uses it differently and it's hard to tell just from the text how it's currently being used. Like the fact that you have to explain how you, individually, use it, is the whole problem!

i am an autistic person who is not confused by the /hj tone indicator or the concept of half joking. i struggle quite a bit with sarcasm and some jokes but half joking is one of those things i get. AND YET i have watched this video four times and i am still baffled by the “absurd amount of orange juice” example. it may be the most confusing /hj use case ive ever seen

I’ve never thought of tone indicators as accessibility tools, but I also didn’t know they were called tone indicators. I learned through context what /s means as my first bit of exposure and that’s really the only one I’ve seen commonly used. All in all this seems like just another bit of Internet slang. Tone can be difficult to read in text, so I’m sure they help, but the way they are malleable and change just tells me that they’re another work of fiction from the Internet. I don’t inherently have a problem with Internet slang or anything, I think it’s a rather remarkable evolution of language, but this just seems like another one of those.

I use /hj regularly when joking about plans with someone. I usually use it as “this is a joke, but I wouldn’t be against it if you’re down.” Like “you should just ditch school and come over to my house /hj”

My issue with tone indicators that even in the best intentions they can sometimes come off as extremely infantalizing. I am an autistic person, one time I posted a piece of art to a discord channel and got multiple replies saying something along the lines of "I love this! /pos" and it made me feel like they thought I was too stupid to be able to parse the phrase "I love this!" as a positive comment.

I only know one scenario that I understood the "/hj”. It was when my best friend on their last day before moving states gave me a note that read, "what to make out?/hj". We both knew we liked eachother but decided to stay friends due to our mental health and family situations. In this scenario the "/hj" was used to indicate they are serious about the question, but it's fine if it's a no and to pretend it's a joke.

I'm also autistic, and I personally use it when I'm being exaggeratory about something genuine. Ex: I've been giving my friend dating app advice. After one of the bits of advice, I said, "Do what I never could, girl!!" It's way too dramatic for the situation, but I do genuinely want her to learn something from my mistakes. So, this is a time when I would use /hj

can you believe this is the first time I've said out loud in a video that I'm autistic

In my experience you can usually interpret "half joking" as saying "Please interpret this as genuine in any respect that makes me look good and ignore it in any respect that makes me look bad."

THANK YOU SM FOR MAKIG THIS VIDEO istg ive been trng t explain this exact point to people for YEARS and im tired of explaining it again and again (i had an explanation jn my notes app on my old phone to just copy and paste at some point) from now on i can just send this video to people when they ask me why i ask them to please explain what they mean wifh words instead the tone indicators bc they confuse me even more than a normal sentence would. genuinely thank you.

I'm autistic too and this frustrates me! I think what this video reveals to me most is that tone indicators can never be truly useful. They're an accessability tool for the neurodivergent, but they will always be primarily used by the neurotypical. The people who define their meaning (through use) can never understand what they are actually doing. Like if someone just knew that some disabled people need a ramp, but didn't really understand what the ramp is actually used for. They might make it far too steep, or put it out in the middle of nowhere. I think you are absolutely right in that people should just take to being more verbose. Clarify what you mean with words. Thank you Jan Misali.

I still think /s and /j are really the only two tone indicators that are actually useful. /gen /srs /pos and many more are literally so much more natural sounding if you just say “genuinely, I’m happy for you” or “I mean this seriously, what are you doing.” Sometimes communicating less ambiguously just means communicating more

As an autistic person I admire your commitment to understanding people... my solution is just accepting I will never fully understand what everyone means

The person who wrote the orange juice example just has a complete lack of awareness of what they are even doing. They didn't even explain why they did it, they are going purely off how it "feels". This is EQUIVALENT to going "I just add haha because hahaha seems like too much etc.". It's nothing to do with any strict meaning, it's completely a product of their interactions with others and natural mirroring of language, which creates that sort of inherent sense of what "feels right". Again, what is frustrating about the comment is that they haven't recognised this, and think that they are offering up a genuinely insightful answer somehow. They are not, they are doing the equivalent of going "haha" feels right but "hahaha" is too much. In other words, you CANNOT know what it means without just seeing how people use it. And if you are new to the use of it that takes some time to learn. I'm sure with autism it is near-impossible.

This made me feel a huge well of empathy for those with autism. This seems like so many hoops to jump through just to understand what someone is tweeting about. Listening to him describe in detail why /hj is annoying (I'd never really given it much thought, I just understand what it means intuitively) gives me immense second hand frustration. Why indicate the tone if the person who needs it most gets confused and has to go on a wild goose chase (possibly never-ending) just to understand what you mean?! It feels like the tip of the iceberg. I wish I could donate some of my social intelligence to you ASD folks... /gen

The fact that every comment trying to define "half-joking" is defining it slightly differently from the last only makes me more confident that it doesn't actually mean anything.

"communication generally involves more than one person" - Jan Misali 2023

you explained the 3 main ways people use /hj perfectly. and i agree, the uses are inherently contradictory making it just more difficult than helpful. You literally have to know the person, the way they talk, their beliefs, and how they feel about certain people or things to interpret /hj correctly which makes it completely unhelpful and unclear when talking to a random stranger online which is usually when tone tags are used in the first place. I love the way you explain things and your thought process makes so much sense to me.

I tend to see /hj with statements like, "If another person is rude at work I'm going to quit on the spot /hj" where the speaker really wants to quit but is afraid of genuinely admitting they want that. The orange juice thing is just confusing

As an autist, I’ve always thought of half joke as “This sentence is an exaggeration of the truth for comedic effect”

The way I interpret /hj, and regularly use it, is "I'm exaggerating a little bit for the sake of humor, but for the most part this is how I genuinely feel". It lets me get my point across without having to be so blunt and up-front with my feelings, since I'm usually a bit too open for my comfort. EDIT: Okay turns out I paused literally 20 seconds before the definitions were explained

I absolutely agree with your point on just how inconvenient it is to abbreviate these. Introducing a new, unclear lexicon for the sake of "clarity" was deeply frustrating, and every so often I'll still see people include one I haven't yet memorized, and that I now need to look up online if I want to try and identify what it is they're trying to express. At that point - having been presented with a scavenger hunt I need to complete in order to tell what people are saying - I usually just give up and write off the entire sentence I can no longer confidently parse. Which would be fine, really. Maybe this is what getting old and not being able to keep up with slang is like - I don't need to understand every single thing everyone ever says. It's not like things like "iderca" ("I don't even really care anymore") were any clearer back when they and other more complicated online shorthand started getting used - and even "lol" or "lmao" are incoherent unless you're already in the know. I just think these ones are so much more frustrating because they ostensibly exist *for* clarity and accessibility, they're just terrible at it. Like putting a wheelchair-accessible bathroom at the top of a staircase, the intent is recognizably there, but the execution is deeply lacking. /genuine

As an autistic pwrson, this video was very opening to see whay my fellow autists see surrounding tone indicators! I wanted to share my thoughts not as a "youre wrong" situation, but to start discussion! The way ive always interpreted /hj is the idea of "jk, unless..." which your mentioned on your slides, but not in the manner i think about it I have it go something like this "Omg, we should totally go to the mall and spend all of our money this weekend /hj" with the /hj being the indicator that it could be a joke if it wasnt neccesary, or could be serious if you were interested

I never knew how entertaining it would be to watch someone algorithmically dissect the meaning of a joke

In my experience (as an autistic person), "half-joking" just means "I'm serious (but not entirely literal; IE "the sentiment this expresses is genuine") about this, but phrasing it in a way that's usually reserved for jokes because I'm ashamed that I'm serious about this." Like, someone will say "I'm about to scream... Half joking, of course." and that means "I'm in serious emotional pain right now, and I need to express that, but I don't feel comfortable enough with [whomever this is being said to] to actually talk about it", which... Well, maybe it's just because I'm autistic, but I can't formulate a response to that.

i can't even make a comment because you went through everything i could possibly comment about in the video already. good video.

I feel like you're like me. I got sick of not understanding people's attitude when communicating with me, so I studied linguistics and etymology to get better at understanding people. I get to the point where my Autism isn't obvious to people anymore, so I feel in myself that I don't notice my own Autism. The only time it rears its ugly head is when someone says something as a joke and I will not for the life of me understand it. FML.

i am so glad that Absurd Amount Of Orange Juice discourse lives on all these years later

Never ran into /hj before and was really confused on how handjobs could be a tone.

I think you hit the nail on the head when you talk about accessibility feature vs internet slang. People like to say that they're for accessibility, but in my experience they're commonly used as internet slang, and if they're used even a little bit as internet slang then that renders them useless for accessibility.

I watched this video months ago, and it actually made me lose trust in my own intuitive understanding of /hj. I stopped using it at all and began overthinking it. I think /hj ends up being like very person-based, like sarcasm. Just identifying when something isn’t being entirely serious (even if there are many different ways it can be unserious) and fitting this against the class of unserious ness that the person using it tends to is helpful to me. Even though I suppose we have pretty different feelings on this, I love this video! It’s extremely well written, and unpacks it in a very helpful way.

in my opinion, it feels like /hj is just used when someone has an opinion but they're scared to fully commit with it so they hide behind it being "partly serious" here's the math: "i really liked this video" + "i feel like the people I'm talking to won't, but if they do that would be awesome" = "this is the best cat video of all time /hj"

this is why i love the way Tumblr's "(derogatory)" meme became a form of tone indication on there. i've used it everywhere since i found it cause it's just a much better tone indicator system than the / system.

The semantic problem that post-ironic sensibilities provoked by metamodern media create

Every single word of this felt like an uninvited window into my brain when somebody asks a poorly phrased question like "do you want to help [whatever task] with me?" No, of course not! It's a task I'd rather not do right now, and quite honestly my answer to this question is no! But! I can't just SAY no, because it'll sound like I'm refusing to help, even though I wasn't asked to help, I was asked if I would WANT to help, which I don't want to, although I don't want to be rude either. If this person wants my help, why not ask directly for it, instead of asking if I'd want to, when the answer is obviously no?

As an autistic guy, I have attempted to use tone indicators and have found that it’s much easier to just clarify later if it becomes an issue. For example (albeit a heavily exaggerated one), saying “I’m gonna go throw pool noodles into your room at 3 am” is much funnier without a /j at the end. At least personally, I start focusing on the tone indicator instead of the joke. Also, my opinion on /hj is, I’ve seen it once and immediately went “wait, what? Like, how? What’s that supposed to mean?” And then 10 minutes later I was recommended this video.

I went from "He's severely overthinking this" to "No, he's right" in ten minutes, great stuff

Long time fan, first time commenter. Well probably first time. Also, more conlangs please. But to the point.... I'm a neurotypical, and I also have an analytical bent of mind. I might be just slightly "on the spectrum" but I don't have to do nearly the explicit analysis that you describe. Most times, I "flash" on social cues, and sometimes that flash returns ambiguous interpretations. N/Ts also get confused and puzzled by social cues, it's just faster and less often. (It also happens when visiting other cultures, where social cues have a different "vocabulary" and I've experienced this problem as well and it's very much as you describe it in your native culture). Overall Iagree entirely with your analysis, but what you might be missing is this: "half-jokes" are INTENDED to either force this analysis (forcing you to think more deeply about these possibilities) or, alternately, to ask. It forces attention, while passive-aggressively suggesting that it isn't. Is it considerate? No, but trying to make other people think isn't always received as considerate. Your videos typically try to make your viewers think about your topic, and I'm sure you've realized that they don't always appreciate this!! This introduces what I will designate possible meaning #0; a metameaning. "I'm going to confuse you on purpose and hope to escape while you recover from this confusion." That's right, possible meaning #0 is the purely distractive value of the exercise; the whole point is to throw you off balance and make you look at the shiny thing. Now, I will actually reach a conclusion. No kidding. Your analysis about #1 vs #2 (including the fact that they're about equally probable), and the rarer #3, #4, and implication of numbers up to n is right on, exactly correct, these are the possibilities. One fairly common one that you overlooked is mislabeled sarcasm, not that this helps - if anything it just makes the ambiguities even worse. BUT BUT BUT!!! It's NEARLY ALWAYS #0 at the same time. If you spend significant time or give great attention (even in a flash) to analyzing it.... #0 WORKED ON YOU. Sorry, but the thing that pisses you off is put there in large part for the purpose of pissing you off. You've been played. Friendly advice: Ignore the whole /hj post and respond to the preceding convo as if the /hj post never happened. You might dismiss it with a lol, acknowledging that somewhere in there is half a joke, but in reality saying no more than this: I'm not confused, I'm not looking at the shiny thing, this convo continues uninterrupted despite your attempt to derail it.

as another person on the spectrum, I really enjoyed the description of how you go through possible interpretations of the sentence later in the video, mainly because most of the possibilities you mentioned really wouldn't even pop to my own conscious mind organically, but having heard the options listed like that, they still sounded like perfectly intuitive things to consider. that aside, just to throw my two cents in or however the saying goes, I think as you kind of mentioned, the main intention of calling something a "half-joke" is specifically to obfuscate how serious the speaker is about the thing they said (read: they don't want to be held accountable for what they said). it's by definition supposed to be an indication that the speaker does not want the reader(/listener) to take them seriously, on the off-chance that they'll find it somehow objectionable, even if they were in fact 100% serious about what they said. Also I think whatever the random person on tumblr was trying to convey, their "absurd amount of orange juice" analogy was just a really bad example even if they did have some kind of a valid point in mind. p.s. the first time I heard of tone indicators was so far into my time on the internet that my gut reaction was to assume people were just being ironic with their usage, both because what a novel and clearly communicated concept it was and because even to this day, I only ever see people talk sarcastically on the internet without any indicators except maybe the context, if it can actually tell anything (in which case, hey, it's basically like tagging their comment with /hj because nobody will know if they actually meant it until someone calls them out on it and they decide then and there how to frame it) or the kinds of posts that are super clear sarcasm even to me with just a sole post without any further context necessary, that go like "wow, I'm SO happy that it happened to rain on the concert day 🙄 /s" or whatever

I think hj is mostly used as like "this is meant to be taken lightly, so dont try and read into it too much"

I'm autistic and tone indicator's annoy me a lot of the time, I know some people who use it after every sentence and use it in places where the tone is extremely obvious and make me use it in those situations and it makes me feel like a child

i love at 12:21 this makes sense, like theyre realizing its stupid and are now trying to convince themselves it does infact make sense

The fact that you used the same example for all three perfectly encapsulates your point. It also boiled my blood cause it didn't add any extra meaning that might me understand. Which is your point, but how dare you. I'm also autistic and I'm so glad I found this video

I remember being in a discord server once where using tone indicators was a rule. As an autistic person Ive never had more confusing and ambiguous social interactions anywhere than that server

as a neurotypical person i interpret "im going to buy an absurd amount of orange juice /hj" as them saying they're gonna buy a lot of orange juice but not enough to actually be absurd but that's where the joke part comes from where they say that it is absurd

I see /s as a backup. The hope is that people will interpret what you've said in the way intended, but if not (given this is the internet), you've got it there to subtly clarify at the end without having to ruin the effect and write out "sarcasm" in full

This video made me understand that I take most things written online or spoken offline as something people say seriously unless it's made clear that they don't mean it like that. And now I see that tone indicators are just part of the internet slang and they're not that useful, though, I didn't look at them as an accessibility tool from the beginning

as an autistic person, /hj has never been a problem for me personally, because I've always interpreted it as "kind of" or exaggeration for comedic effect, and I've almost always been able to tell the two apart with ease. Surely there's a better way of making that apparent (like, literally saying "kind of") but it works for me and my friends. I think there might be a tone indicator for exaggerating..? I honestly should start using that. edit: apparently there is and it's /hyp for hyperbole. I didn't even know of the word "hyperbole" prior to this so it makes sense I wasn't aware of that one (english is not my first language.)

i love listening to smart people talk about completely random things

Great video. Also for the record on that orange juice example I'm 100% sure they're using it redundantly, the "absurd" conveys what they mean and it's a terrible example (I have no idea what a good example would be, your video has convinced me there probably isn't one)

Tone indicators absolutely make me so upset online, because like...I have spent 20 years just learning the already existing rules of the English language in order to properly communicate. You can't just throw a whole new system on me and expect me to just know what it means. That's not accessibility, that literally makes it HARDER for me to communicate. Especially because I feel like the internet had already kind of figured out how to express tone across text for the most part. Emphasis comes through italics or all caps, which can help clarify tone, and I LOVE the whole spongebob meme form of sarcasm. It's genuinely easier for me to interpret "yEaH i LiKe ThAt" as sarcasm because the text follows the pitch variation of exaggerated sarcasm. This whole new system is baffling to me because most of the time when I see it, my brain doesn't think "how can I interpret this text in an auditory sense to best match it to tone in oral communication" like I do with other ways of phrasing text online. My brain thinks "was this a typo? what does this word mean? what is this meant to be short for that would make sense in the context of this sentence? is it slang I haven't heard? Is it a reference to something I've never watched or read? how does this make sense at all in the context of what they're trying to say? What extra layer of communication am I missing here?" It's not pleasant, it's not helpful, and most of the time it does the opposite of what it's "intended" to do. Why are we using j when jk already exists and was more clear? Why does gen mean genuine when gen is ALREADY a common abbreviated of general? Pos is ABSOLUTELY just piece of shit. Honestly I think the only people this would even moderately help are younger autistic people who haven't learned the original system yet. ...then again, I am autistic and hate change and now they're trying to change the whole language that I use, so that could be part of the issue as well lol

i like how tumblr has started using things like (affectionate) and (derogatory) even if its used sarcastically sometimes, at least you dont have to learn a bunch of abbreviations for it

I have only seen /hj used in flirting, where they are being serious about an offer to date someone or saying something risky, but are using /hj to offer the person they're flirting with an out, essentially "I'm being serious, but if you don't feel the same way, you're welcome to interpret this as a joke"

i wrote a comment like 3 months ago or something about how i couldn't even make an actual comment about the concept of "half-joking" because everything was already addressed, and that's still basically true because what i'm about to say is very related to what you said in the video, but while i was rewatching today i could feel that i wanted to say something, and it ended up being a lot more than it started as. it isn't really supposed to be helpful, just my own personal thoughts, but i guess it could potentially be. i personally believe that "half-joking" as a term _started out_ with the express purpose of being unclear - like, to me, the first few times i saw it, that's basically what it was to me, because every time i talked to someone who used the term (not even talking about /hj) they just didn't seem like they wanted me to know what they meant. indeed, this is your 3rd definition of /hj, plus it's also my own specific interpretation of "half-joking," which is why i said this was basically addressed - you defined my interpretation, and said everyone has their own. i think there's more to say about /hj3, though. there's a number of reasons why they wouldn't want me to know - waiting for a response, not sure if it's true, still wondering whether to do something related, don't want me to be sure, even for no reason, etc - and those are mostly valid for me, but it's unclear by nature and by that point i have to figure out which reason it is by talking further. "/hj" further complicates things because "/hj" is distinct from "half-joking" _to me_ in that it's (usually...) being used in an attempt to make something more clear, which makes it much more likely to be one of the first 2 definitions, forming a tree of meaning that is very large for something specifically meant to make things more clear. half-joking in its full form also has a non zero chance of meaning /hj1 or /hj2, just like "/hj", so it's entirely possible it was just a "simpler" communication solution for me to always interpret it as intentionally unclear - 1, it being unclear is something i won't bother reading between the lines for, and therefore it _can_ mean the other two. 2, /hj1 and /hj2 boil down to "this is true"/"this is ultimately not a joke" or "this is not true"/"this is ultimately a joke" for me, and i can usually figure out which of those it is WITHOUT "/hj," and if i can't, i can ask. this, of course, as the title states, makes it clear that /hj as a clarification tool is worse than useless - and this brings me to the last conclusion i had while having a good think about this, which is that i now believe that /hj was added to the tone indicator pool as an actual indicator of tone. IF you don't have any type of issue communicating, it is possible to use inflection and pacing to let the person you're talking to know you're not only making a joke, but not being fully clear whether you're joking. this is probably harder to notice than sarcasm, both in real life and through text, which makes it sad that this could have had a real use (edit: the "real use" being "clarifying the intent" of being unclear instead of clarifying the deeper intent) if we lived in an idealistic world where everyone had the same definition of "half-joking." that's all

Bro, I remember exactly where I watched your videos. Like this one, I started in an intersection besides the train station. And the one about the imperial system, close to my old house to visit a friend.

I find the tumblr-ish way of putting a tone in parenthesis afterward a much easier way to convey tone. like if I say "Bastard (affectionate)" instead of "Bastard/hj" it makes much more sense that what I'm trying to say is meant to be endearing and not taken seriously, but also partially true. Usually I'd say it to a friend or pet that sometimes gets on my nerves but I love them for that. It's also not perfect but it's how I usually get my point across since I'm very bad at finding the words I actually want to use and instead find an approximation of what is in my head. Autism feels to me like trying to sift boulders through a pasta strainer and if I say my intended meaning or tone it works much better than some vague letters that can't be as specific as I need.

when I see /hj I literally just tell myself not to think too deep into the meaning of it

I legitimately started laughing my ass off at 16:39 that's a PERFECT example 😂😂 this was a really interesting video, as a guy who's frequently very sarcastic and doesn't use any tone indicators I didn't know /hj was even a thing but I intuitively understand the intent of it when I see it, and simultaneously I fully understand why you don't because you explain it so logically. looking forward to seeing more of your videos /hj (sorry I couldn't resist)

for me, /hj is something i interpret as a joke rooted in truth. like, saying you hate someone as a half joke, because you don’t actually hate them, but you aren’t on the best of terms

The way I interpret the "im going to buy an absurd amount of orange juice /hj" sentence is that the person is literally going to buy an irregular amount of orange juice (2-3 gallons or something similar) but since they think that the mental imagery of buying an absurd amount of orange juice is funny they expand the amount of orange juice they say they are going to buy in a hyperbolic sense (an absurd amount, which would be like 10-20 gallons)

jan Misali trying to figure out the meaning of "i am going to buy an absurd amount of orange juice /hj" is the highlight of my day edit: sorry to be that person but this is the first time something like this has happened... MAMA I'M FAMOUS~ ✨️✨️✨️

I find it unreasonably hilarious that this has been a subject occupying so much of your mind space for so long. Legit was laughing the whole video, you're not even wrong A+

This whole rant has been one of the most relatable videos I’ve ever seen lmao

the barely restrained rage in the orange juice segment is a prime example of the quality content that keeps me coming back /serious

The meaning of a half-joke kept feeling intuitive to me, but every time you dove into explaining what it actually implies my vision started swimming and my brain started questioning everything I ever knew.

i like the way you explain things

Exactly my thoughts!! Tone indicators have made things so much more confusing for me. I like to joke and I like to be silly, but I also like to clarify what I mean so people aren't out of the loop, and tone indicators are the worst way to do that.

By far my favorite use of tone indication is the (affectionate)/(derogatory) distinction, because in addition to disambiguating words and phrases that could be compliments or insults depending on the intent and context, e,g, "this is the most autistic video essay on the internet (affectionate)," it can also be used for humorous effect to imply that the speaker has some strong opinion about things that you wouldn't normally expect someone to have strong opinions about, e.g. "I am putting on shoes (derogatory)," or to reverse the meaning of a word or phrase that normally has a fairly unambiguous meaning, e.g. "Guel Jeturk is such a useless fucking bastard (affectionate)," which I also think is a very funny thing to do.

Half joking is for me like when you mean something to be funny, but it is at the same time an accurate description of reality.

Your perspective and this video is very interesting

I've never seen anyone explain and exhibit so intricately and accurately the exact process I go through when unsure of how to interpret people's meaning and intent...

After much deliberation I have decided that "I'm gonna buy an absurd amount of orange juice /hj" means "I really want to buy an absurd amount of orange juice, but I probably won't" with about 80% confidence.

okay but i absolutely love overthinking stuff like this, it makes me so happy im not the only one who does this. But everytime i try to vocalize these overwhelming urges about certain topics i just get "dude its just ___, calm down" but like... I am calm, im just thinking in depth about something that interests me a bit

The only time I've been using /hj was back when I thought it meant highly-joking, which would've been an helpful tone indicator, so I misused /hj and made it even worse than it is. My understanding of it is the first definition you gave, because most people don't think jokes have an element of truth to them, so they specify when they had an intent of adding an element of truth, but yeah tone indicators are a mess, I barely use them anymore even though nearly all my friends and I are neurospicy, we just made our in jokes and constantly tease each other until we out right say that we are speaking seriously about this or that subject

thanks for the information. i will be using quarter joke from now on /qj

the jan Misali channel is the only channel we can name that will, without prompting, drop an 18 minute video essay about something, and we're already on board for it before we even realized it was incoming

"A joke is a joke. You can't make it half." - T.J. "Henry" Yoshi, i think

your voice is so calming, you sound like the bird from rio

I kind of see /hj like when you say something really serious over text and you put “lol” at the end to make it less heavy

i think /lh (lighthearted) and /nm (not mad) are the most useful tone indicators for me. i have hard time telling when someone is genuinely upset or if they're jokingly upset (ex: "i hate you" used non-seriously) and i can sometimes interpret simple statements as trying to pick a fight so /lh makes situations less tense

This feels like the tone indicator version of the phrase "there's a grain of truth behind every joke".

I like your funny words, magic man. Joking aside, as a fellow autistic I feel what you mean but apparently I don't struggle as much as I don't like how /s and /j ruin jokes by immediately making it obvious they're jokes to the point that I'd rather confuse them sometimes than have them spoiled every time, and I don't find /hj much more egregious than other indicators as it at least specifies something is not fully serious, which is quite important, and that it's not fully a joke, which is less important but still helps. On that topic, a way to make tone indicators be an actually decent accessibility tools would be to actually implement them as a full feature, like CWs on the Fediverse, in a way where they're hidden by default but you can hover over something and see the intent indication (or even have them enabled constantly if that's your thing). It's not like it's hard, it' pretty much literally a /\W\\j\W/ regex.

Great rant, 100% agree. I tend to see them and move past since I'm resigned to not really knowing what they meant by it.

I love the Hand Job tone indicator. It clarifies whether what you're saying is an invitation for a hand job

I feel like "half-joking" generally applies to situations where one doesn't feel comfortable expressing certain thoughts, and hints at the truth behind a mask of humor. For example saying "wow that old car is sadder than I am /hj" would indicate a self-deprecating joke that hides genuine feelings of low self-esteem

I hate pretty much all abbreviations of anything, because if you don't already know what it means then you have to either ask or just be completely oblivious. Also, from the side of using abbreviations you save little to no time typing/saying it, and if someone asks you, you have to explain anyways and it loses all purpose. (I know this is kind of unrelated to the video but it was mentioned so I'm saying it anyways)