What does "ばーーーか" mean?


I was texting a friend earlier and I tried speaking Japanese with her (utterly
failing) and she sent "ばーーーか". I understand that this word means "fool;
stupid", but I'm confused about the usage of dashes.

P.S.: I'm not learning Japanese at the moment so I have no idea about the
usage of dashes in the language, or the entirety of the Japanese language in
general. She's a native speaker and I attempted to converse with her with my
trusty translator. Should I see this statement as offensive or should I simply
take it as a joke? And what do those dashes mean in the context of this text?




It's just used as a wide [long-vowel
marker](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C5%8Donpu). So instead of saying
"fool", she kind of said "fooooool!". I'm afraid to say this, but it's almost
certainly offensive.

People often replace the proper long vowel markers with two or more full-width
dashes because the former has a more nuanced shape in some fonts. Dashes look
better as a long continuous line (right).

[![enter image description
here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/e7XwM.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/e7XwM.png)

