Interpreting on the Internets

I was just reading a story on slashdot about a clearly successful NASA mission which is unfortunately coming to a close because the space vehicle is simply running out of power.  The poster closed with, “congratulations to all geniuses on this one.” Is he being ironic?  What do you think?  The comments section of this story was pretty fascinating to see.  Someone people weren’t sure if the last sentence was ironic or genuine.  Others took it as irony and made vicious comments about the poster.  Interestingly I didn’t read any which were taking the comment as genuine.  Why is this interesting?  I had a teacher in high school who said something like, “In the 60s, America adopted cynicism.”  We’re cynical about nearly everything:  Our government, corporations, other people.   It’s I think the ultimate tragedy of the 20th century.  Then comes the internet.  Where communication is inherently limited yet so freely available.  If you aren’t making a video or audio podcast, how exactly are you going to use your wry humor to make a point.  It’s all so inherently vague that a lot of times, we’re just missing each other. Sure emoticons sort of help, but not nearly enough.  Anyway, I find it sad when something genuine and sincere gets translated into something sarcastic simply because it was written and not spoken.