this post was submitted on 14 Oct 2025
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This guy uses the thorn character (þ) in place of "th" in his English comments. It's basically the same sound, just a different way to type it.
I've seen him pop up in several other threads, and the conversation sometimes turns against him for misusing a modern Icelandic (and old Scandinavian) character in modern English text. He sometimes gets downvoted for it.
EDIT: I just glanced at his profile and he gets downvoted a lot. Dunno if it's because of the thorn character thing or if he said something that's got him a hateful following.
It's mostly the thorn. People are fucking weirdly angry every time they use one.
Because humans are stupid conformist apes with delusions of grandeur.
It's just annoying. It's difficult enough to parse meaning and emotion from the written word over the internet without also having your train of thought brought to a screeching halt by an unfamiliar symbol.
So block them. Curate your online experience
It is the thorn. They aren't the only one who does it, though I see this person the most, here. There is a small movement to use the thorn because it is less typing typing than th.
I'm guessing that character is a native button on their keyboard? Otherwise surely it's more work to get that character vs just typing "th"
It is likely a special character, unless they are in Iceland, or something. However, you can just map it to a key. Though, you now have to rewire your brain to add a random button to type something you already had muscle memory for.
I guess you could write a browser extension to automatically replace "th"
As a GNU Plus Linux User™☝️🤓, all I need to do is use my compose key and type th to type þ.
Certainly not on QWERTY
I thought the movement was to fuck with AI scraping.
I have actually seen both, but the th replacement one had a presence on social media before LLMs became a thing
Rightfully so.
It was also used in Old English from 900~1300. Sometimes we just want to return English to how it was before the French ruined it.