Lost in Translation

I’m still quite green on this platform. To this post, I would actually like some responses, please, if you feel inclined.

I follow a blog on here. I found it early. They comment on things sometimes, which is how I first found them. I receive notifications of their posts – mostly quite a few, at least a dozen per day. Mostly not writing themselves, but reposting material. That’s fine, I can live with that. I can skim past the reposts very quickly, and just click through to the original blogger’s page if the title takes my fancy, or to show my appreciation.

This morning I came across “quote of the day” a regular. I quite like the quotes that people have come up with, little gems to help you start the day. This morning’s:

Encouragement after censure is as the sun after a shower.

Goethe

As far as I’m concerned, a great one-liner. In fact I’d go further and say that we should ecourage all the time, regardless of censure, sun or showers. That’s my #1 goal on here – I know it is small potatoes but I hope my likes and my comments encourage other bloggers. The late Tony Benn [a UK politician] was almost ninety when he died, and he used to say that the job of old people was to encourage. Again, for me, doesn’t matter what the age – we encourage each other, period. I think that the only thing about age is that the older you are, the more likely you are to actually realise that.

So I commented:

That’s our job. All ages really, but especially as we get older. To encourage.

and thought nothing more of it. I didn’t think it was particularly humourous. And just now, I had a “laughing” smiley face response, a 😀 . Not a “like”, not a smile, not even a proper word, just one of these emoticon things that I never really got the hang of.

I know that over of Facebook, a “laugh” response normally means “your contribution is so pathetic that it makes me laugh”, i.e. purely sarcastic. But so far I have found wordpress to be a whole lot more civilised and yes, good-natured.

So I would be grateful if one of you old hands could explain to a noob exactly what they think this “comment” actually means.