11 Replies

Caps ahead

@Booobs: The tone tag helps because in a lot of places online, people will troll by asking a question in weaselly or straight up inflammatory terms (going into a Trek fic comm and asking "Can someone PLEASE explain to me why ANYONE would think that Kirk and Spock are a couple?" is an old and classic example). Then when people tell them to naff off, because they've seen this a thousand times, they say "But I was just asking a question! Why are you so angry? I guess you freaks are too sensitive." This forum skews very young and loads of us are neurodivergent in one way or another, so using /gen prevents dogpiles and allows for "I get what you're saying but mmmmmaybe don't put it that way on another forum." This place is unusually mellow and not, for example, Twitter, so 99% of the members act in good faith and it seems to work well.

i can see that people in other comments have mostly answered these questions, but i just wanna share my experience lol

so im (probably) ND, and i dont always need tone tags. but i still prefer when people use tone tags with me because i realized that sometimes i overthink what people actually mean a lot. personally, i dont really know why ppl use /gen for questions, im just guessing that, like someone else said, its out of habit or a just in case thing

I think people warn about it because of how it may come off, because someone could be excited but it could come off as aggressive, because when someone uses all caps, ITS LIKE YOU'RE SCREAMING, and if there's other tone indicators, or even just someone saying "I'm excited" or "I'm passionate about this", then it can help people decipher it.

But it could be seen as disconcerting for some people for one reason or another, and while it could be a small majority, it's better to be safe with this case.

@StargazingOrion: oh ok, I get what a tone indicator is I just don't know why it wouldn't be assumed a question is genuine but alright

this is a heavily ND community. As a ND, I don’t really need these things so it’s hard for me to understand why others do, but I think that they help ND people who do need them