Yesterday I found someone who says “question mark” after every question and has apparently forgotten how to inflect their voice to express tone. It was horrifying, but I realized I’m not that different. I immediately think “cringe” or “based” at many things. Even when I’m not terminally online everything I hear gets put on a meme template by my brain. I’m having trouble expressing tone/emotion in writing without visual indicators like emojis or “/s.” I know I’m not alone, what do we do?
Not sure about essays and other non-narrarive writings, but lots of fiction books have an equivalent for sarcasm markers.
They’ll write something like this, since lots of sarcasm is based on tone and hard-to-tell context.
If they’re feeling very charitable, or if it’s really not clear, they’ll even make it even more obvious.
In Portuguese some folks even say something like “aqueles caras” (“[said] those guys”) after a sarcastic sentence to make it clear they’re being sarcastic.
Sarcasm markers are way more ubiquitous than they seem. I don’t think you should worry too much about adopting some internet lingo like saying “cringe”, because language evolved.
But Sarcasm is weird. Maybe you could try to consciously pick up on how writers, actors and even family and acquaintances you like express it outside of forums in various ways.
That’s a good point about fiction. I just find it weird how the internet makes weird slang and memes ubiquitous.