I can't help but think this is a phenomenon unique to the US where education has been completely devalued. If the only point of education is to fulfill a requirement to make more money then it makes sense to shortcut as much as possible.

The solution is of course no computer

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[–] Esoteir@hexbear.net 10 points 5 days ago (2 children)

yo fuck the em dash all my homies hate the em dash ——— i didn't know that shit even existed until ChudGPT zombies shit them onto my screen, back in my day you only had access to two dashes on your dang keyboard, _ or -, and if you wanted your - to be longer you would just press the damn thing a few more times like this

and shit you'd mostly just use them to make dancing kirby emoticons in AOL chat <(-'.'<) <(-'.'-)> (>'.'-)>

[–] darkmode@hexbear.net 7 points 5 days ago (1 children)

i never bother to look up how ppl made the special characters so the kirbys were always my fav ^(^_^)^

[–] Le_Wokisme@hexbear.net 8 points 5 days ago

some "smart" text editors would automatically emdash if you did --, like how microsoft word would ... into a marginally smaller actual unicode ellipses character

[–] gay_king_prince_charles@hexbear.net 2 points 4 days ago

The compose key has been around for ages