Yes all public employees associated with this event should be very proud, that they saved the public from a factory owner who had paid hundreds of employees a living wage, for decades. We're better off without that sort!

If you're vying for satire, it's not immediately obvious. :(

  Poe's law is an Internet adage which states that, without a 
  clear indicator of the author's intent, parodies of extreme 
  views will, to some readers, be indistinguishable from 
  sincere expressions of the parodied views.

I agree there are busts that seem pointless, but there are also busts that make sense. I'm in favor of busting the armed narcos growing on public lands.

Once again, I'll endorse the use of the tilde ('~') as a punctuation mark to indicate sarcasm or satire. To use it, replace the end punctuation of a single sentence with the tilde, or wrap an entire block of text in two of them, like quotation marks.

~It's so very difficult to use.~

Fortunately, the previous post is written such that a Poe's Law check would probably confirm my suspicion of satire.

The proper way in the U.K to denote sarcasm is to use (!) at the end of a sentence. This is done by U.K broadcast subtitles.

For example, watch Dr. Who with subtitles on. You'll see (!) used a lot. :)

The Japanese do use it for sarcasm though I'm not sure how common this is, I've never encountered it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilde#Japanese

It's more common to see "へ～～～" as opposed to "へーーー” (read: "heeeee" in a surprised manner with rising intonation on the e's)

The holding and rising tone makes it also used for happiness and excitement. It's "cutesy" (childlike) because of the held sound.

So ありがとう can become ありがとう～～ (the う is held at the end) which in English would be similar to saying "thank youuuuuuuu!!!"

Instead of "youuuuuuuu" it's been borrowed by some English speakers to replace repeating consonants: "Thank you~"

This is a terrible idea, given the existing use of a tilde at the end of a sentence to indicate general positive sentiment:

"I loved the present! Thank you~~"

That is literally the first time I have ever seen the tilde used in that way. I have seen it used to indicate sarcasm, satire, or snark on at least four separate web sites. In any case, we already have a mark for surprise or excitement: the exclamation point ('!'). No doubling up when we still don't have a generally accepted mark for insincerity.

I imagine it's a bit of a cultural thing, so it'll depend on the sites you visit.

I've seen it uses regularly as an indicator of positive sentiment by Japanese netizens, and people imitating them.

How did you get "surprise or excitement" from "general positive sentiment"?

It goes the other way around. The exclamation mark is supposed to denote surprise or excitement. General positive sentiment is represented more closely by '!' than sarcasm or satire is represented by anything.

There are only a few symbols on the default US keyboard that are potentially eligible for promotion to punctuation. If you want "general positive sentiment" to have its own mark, why not use '+'? Plus for positivity. Tilde for not exactly this, which is close to its use in mathematics.