For example, people on Reddit asking redundant questions and give equally redundant or unhelpful answers.
Whenever every ‘What’s the worst show you’ve seen?’ is asked, you’ll get 10,000 “Kardashians” answers, which is just easy karma farming.
If someone posts in a community that’s geared for something like opinions, but someone elects to just go on a full scale rant instead.
I used to use /s all the time over at Reddit - especially in political discussions. If I posted sarcastically “advocating” for something, I didn’t want people to misread the post and think I seriously supported that thing.
Normally, I could trust that people would pick up on the sarcasm, but it’s hard over text and there were people actually advocating for the horrible stuff. I didn’t want to be mistaken for one of them, so I’d add a /s. It definitely ruined the joke, but I’d rather do that than have someone think I was racist/sexist/bigoted/etc.
Sometimes the /s is necessary. It’s difficult to convey sarcasm in writing.