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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[–] slazer2au@lemmy.world 165 points 2 weeks ago (11 children)
[–] Blackfeathr@lemmy.world 146 points 2 weeks ago

Yep. Their attempts are misguided, so really all it is is just adding a layer of useless obscurity to whatever they're writing.

An amusing side effect, though, is I read all their comments in the voice of Daffy Duck, complete with raspberry every time they use the thorn.

[–] Havatra@lemmy.zip 33 points 2 weeks ago (11 children)

Ah, makes sense, kinda. Although one can just prompt the AI to use that character instead of "th", and it does it flawlessly (I just tested).

[–] magic_lobster_party@fedia.io 54 points 2 weeks ago (5 children)

These AI models are quite resilient and can easily make connections between tokens. Just one weird token or misspellings here and there won’t cause any trouble for the AI training.

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[–] fargeol@lemmy.world 147 points 2 weeks ago (7 children)
[–] A_norny_mousse@feddit.org 39 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

i m@dE THIZ c0Mment wiTh 7h3 133T peRL $cr1PT!!

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[–] DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works 126 points 2 weeks ago (12 children)

>"people"
>Looks inside
>Its just that one user

[–] HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 47 points 2 weeks ago (11 children)

Yeah, but to be honest, Lemmy is small enough to notice individuals.

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[–] deegeese@sopuli.xyz 90 points 2 weeks ago (12 children)

It’s just one idiot trying to get attention.

[–] SparkleBooty@lemmy.world 35 points 2 weeks ago (13 children)

Im an idiot, where's my attention?

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[–] blockheadjt@sh.itjust.works 26 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

OP is probably their alt, even.

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[–] davidgro@lemmy.world 89 points 2 weeks ago (7 children)

"People" is one specific person. Sxan or something.

[–] e0qdk@reddthat.com 34 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

Yeah; @Sxan@piefed.zip uses þ a lot to mess with people trying to train LLMs off the Fediverse, IIRC, but I don't think I've seen anyone else using it regularly.

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[–] GrammarPolice@lemmy.world 80 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

It's just that one guy i think

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[–] TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world 75 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)
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[–] GregorGizeh@lemmy.zip 58 points 2 weeks ago (5 children)

Its just that one guy who does it, i think either out of pretentiousness or to hamper indexing.

[–] FaceDeer@fedia.io 63 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

He claims it's to "poison" AI training data.

Innumerable people have explained to him that this doesn't work, but he appears to be either immune to education in this matter or is just using this as an excuse to do it anyway for some other reason.

[–] hogmomma@lemmy.world 41 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

"Immune to education." I love it.

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[–] Brkdncr@lemmy.world 56 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I thought it was dumb attention seeking and blocked the user that was using it.

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[–] HatchetHaro@pawb.social 55 points 2 weeks ago (18 children)

i mean, i get why people are annoyed by it, but personally i found that the thorn didn't really impede my ability to read that guy's posts. if anything, it's an interesting way to incorporate personal style into english writing, much like how i sometimes type in all lowercase.

ßesides, it's fun tø fuck around å little bît.

[–] janNatan@lemmy.ml 55 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (17 children)

Ok. It's time for unsolicited German facts.

The ß or "eszett" (also known as "scharfes s" or "sharp s") is actually the combination of the old long s (ſ) and a regular s.

ſ + s = ſs = ß

Isn't that neat? It's also worth noting that no words start with ß, and it is lower-case only. If you need to write a word with an ß in all caps, replace it with a double s.

Straße -> STRASSE

Edit: not all of this is accurate, apparently. See comments below.

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[–] Cris_Color@lemmy.world 54 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks 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 38 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks 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 30 points 2 weeks ago

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

Same here

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[–] Bo7a@piefed.ca 48 points 2 weeks 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 2 weeks ago (1 children)

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

[–] 0x0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 18 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Same. Their comments felt like a mechanism to deliver thorns into my eyeballs, and I said no more.

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[–] corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 46 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Attention. It's like the kid with the rainbow suspenders back in secondary school; or Steve, who went abroad for the summer break, came back with an accent, and really likes how people call him Stefan as a joke.

[–] Aeao@lemmy.world 19 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (3 children)

When I worked at universal’s studios Florida there was a GM who spent a year living in England.

He had a “thick” English accent. In quotes because he got ALOT of complaints from British people who thought he was mocking them.

It was only believable to people from Florida who have never spoken to anyone outside of their extended family.

I can’t even explain how fake his accent one since this is text…. But just imagine

“Pip pip old champ, there’s a situation at the buggy corral! Post haste good boy, post haste”

Btw I had to look up the spelling for corral because it’s so uncommon here spell check got confused. It might be uncommon there to idk.

British guests were like “well you can’t be an idiot because you’re the one in charge around here… so you must be mocking us”

Nope he was just weird.

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[–] Jimmycrackcrack@lemmy.ml 39 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

I think it's just that one guy and it's kind of their whole thing.

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[–] CheeseNoodle@lemmy.world 37 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

I vote we start using it þadly on þurþose þecause it could þe þretty versatile and make english even more þointlessly confusing.

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[–] anon6789@lemmy.world 35 points 2 weeks 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 2 weeks ago (3 children)

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

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[–] Blackmist@feddit.uk 33 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Because they're pretentious twats who can't even use it correctly.

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[–] mad_lentil@lemmy.ca 32 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)
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[–] rimu@piefed.social 29 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (6 children)

On PieFed, that character is automatically converted to 'th'.

[–] jerkface@lemmy.ca 19 points 2 weeks ago

That's savage.

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[–] gusgalarnyk@lemmy.world 27 points 2 weeks 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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[–] Duke_Nukem_1990@feddit.org 25 points 2 weeks ago (22 children)

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

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[–] CTDummy@aussie.zone 24 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Im almost certain it’s trolling with the AI reason as an excuse. It would have very little effect on an AI, which would recognise the character as anomalous and discard it or ignore the comment. The only other person I saw doing it replied with every character replaced with similar nonsense when I stated similar to them. Wouldn’t surprise me if it was their former account as it was a while ago and it was copping bans because of it.

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[–] Tudsamfa@lemmy.world 21 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Interesting what's written here, I actually saw it more often in some Discord server. As far as I know, there it is just for fun and/or homestuck nostalgia, without any deeper meaning behind it.

Just like calling X "twitter" or "the hellsite", or annotating everything with parenthesis, or using or refusing to use emoji, there does not need to be more of a reason to do something with written language than "I like it that way". How much stylisation you can inject into your writing before you stop being comprehensible is another question.

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