Bad message, or bad reception?
99% of the people I encounter "get" my sense of humor and are capable of correctly interpreting sarcasm or other nuance *most* of the time. I mean, occasionally even my wife, daughter and I misread each other. Misunderstanding happens.
Online communications *are* notoriously more difficult to convey subtle messages in - and all of the attempts to correct for that have been less than satisfactory.
Still, it seems that this is a two way street. There is a woman at the office, she is nice enough - but she has no ability to detect sarcasm. After several times joking with her and either getting a blank look or upsetting her, I just began to avoid her. When I have to deal with her, I keep the conversation as literal as possible. Abstraction or subtly just doesn't work with her. It isn't that she is dumb or humorless, she is just very literal.
