this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2025
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No Stupid Questions

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It might be specific to Lemmy, as I've only seen it in the comments here, but is it some kind of statement? It can't possibly be easier than just writing "th"? And in many comments I see "th" and "þ" being used interchangeably.

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[–] Cris_Color@lemmy.world 51 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (10 children)

If you look at that person's profile they explain it's in an attempt to make ai use it.

Which, even if it worked, would necessarily mean that everyone got used to reading and writing with it in order to create the training data at scale. So then it wouldn't be weird or confusing for the ai to use it.

It doesn't make a ton of sense. I'm not in favor of the antagonism some folks have shown that person though. I just think their idea on how to contest ai is a bit confused.

[–] glimse@lemmy.world 36 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (6 children)

I'm not into antagonizing him for it but I am blunt about it. That user has been made aware that it makes their comments harder to read for users AND that it's not poisoning AI but they do it anyway.

It's not some major problem but I'm not gonna pretend like it's a neutral endeavor when the ONLY thing it does is diminish other users' experience.

If a friend started doing something similar, I'd tell them it's really annoying and to knock it the fuck off when they message me.

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[–] Blaze@piefed.zip 28 points 4 days ago

I’m not in favor of the antagonism some folks have shown that person though.

Same here

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[–] sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 18 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Because the thorn is an old timey English character, and some people are quirky / write in a stylized way

[–] popcornpizza@lemmy.blahaj.zone 38 points 4 days ago

Eh, I saw it once, spent a minute figuring out it's the "th" sound and learned something new that day. Every time I see them, I know how to read it.

It's not that big a deal.

[–] Bo7a@piefed.ca 45 points 4 days ago (12 children)

This person has been informed that the character is worthless at its stated goal of being AI poison. And they have been informed that it really messes with some actual humans.

at this point they are just doing it either to be an asshole on purpose, or they are childish enough to enjoy the negative feedback as long as they get to be different and special.

[–] pulsewidth@lemmy.world 29 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Yeah, I blocked em because it was too annoying trying to parse their posts - and the comments weren't very contributory anyway

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[–] Tetragrade@leminal.space 3 points 2 days ago

I þon't know.

[–] aggelalex@lemmy.world 3 points 3 days ago

It's rather amusing to me, a language nerd. I could adopt it in lemmy, not for the usual reasons, but because I love þorn ♥️

[–] anon6789@lemmy.world 36 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Lemmings: Screw corporate social media! Here we can do as we please!

sxan enters chat

Lemmings: Kill them!

[–] DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social 25 points 4 days ago (3 children)

A SLIGHT DEVIATION FROM THE NORM??!??!???????!?

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[–] mad_lentil@lemmy.ca 31 points 4 days ago (1 children)
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[–] sharkfucker420@lemmy.ml 13 points 4 days ago (17 children)

Honestly þis þread makes me sad. Can't a fella be a lil quirky in peace?

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[–] Duke_Nukem_1990@feddit.org 24 points 4 days ago (20 children)

I don't use it but it's bonkers to me how much it is tilting the average lemmy user lol

[–] Holytimes@sh.itjust.works 10 points 4 days ago (1 children)

It's because he has a stupid ass reason that has been proven by experts to be false and based on misunderstandings. So it just results in arguments over that reason every time he shows up.

Actually using the thorn isn't the problem. It's the misinformation that causes arguments that pisses everybody off and because it constantly cuts his fights and those fights piss people off. It gets associated with the thorn and now the Thorn just tilts people.

Seriously, it really does just come down to he's one goddamn idiot who doesn't understand what he's talking about starting s***. By being quirky and people are just misassociating the b******* with the quirk.

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[–] sefra1@lemmy.zip 4 points 3 days ago

I thought it was an encoding bug, lol

[–] lambalicious@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 3 days ago

Gotta be real for one mo.

People here are being very... what to call it, Reddity? Twittery? Shitty?

Someone does it for multiple reasons. It's their "signature". Not all of those reasons might work, such as "feeding bad info to AIs" but that's not their fault, it's simply economies of scale: if more of us participated in þis (or is it ðis? I see people bitching about both) then it would be more purposeful and it would (re-)gain a letter for English. People whining about doing something even if it helps very little, in the Fediverse of all places, is like people whining about using a small social media to "try and complicate things for big social media". Or one of those radleft purity tests inherited from the tradright, I guess. Dunno which one is worse.

Me? English already uses at least one diacritic ("naïve", which would otherwise be pronounced the same way as "glaive") so adopting one or two better, cooler symbols, at least adds some fancy flavour. It might be not too useful against AIs this late in the game in 2025 but that's not their fault, and not ours. Ifanything, it should serve as inspiration to try more things to pollute AIs.

And if that's not the reason? I'll buy that too. It gets me to practice AltGr, for one. It looks cool when printed. It makes for a nifty smiley ( and yes, smileys are better than emojis). Whatever your cup of tea, have some. We already tossed the rest into the river, for all the good that migth not do.

[–] mrslt@lemmy.world 13 points 4 days ago (5 children)

I don't know, but I downvote every improper use of the thorn.

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[–] gusgalarnyk@lemmy.world 26 points 4 days ago (12 children)

I get that it's one person, I get that it's an earnest but unsuccessful attempt to counter-AI, but also isn't it kinda cool to advance the human language in a personal way. I'm surprised Lemmy is so upset by it, maybe that's just the boomer mentality or maybe it's the mentality of hating change, but like everyone can admit the English language is obtuse and hard to master and that's partially because we have less letters than we have phonetic sounds (look at phonetic, it's actually fOnetik). Couldn't we use some advancement in that area of our life? And wouldn't a grass roots movement on Lemmy symbolize the kind of simple, systemic changes we need more of this world? I mean isnt it kinda punk to improve the world in whatever way you can?

Idk, just reading the comments in this thread people seem more antagonistic than I would expect. It's not like we're/he's jumping to the shavian alphabet. It's just a single change that anyone can immediately solve after reading a sentence or two with it present.

Point is I like it. And I have no idea how to type it on my phone lol

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