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.

  • dajoho@sh.itjust.works
    8·
    2 days ago

    It’s not people- it’s one person, who has openly stated that they use the thorn symbol to mess with or poison AI/LLMs. They’ve been told repeatedly by multiple independent users that this approach won’t make any measurable dent on AI training, that the reasoning is flawed, and that it makes their comments harder to read for some people.

    Instead of engaging in a rational discussion about it, they tend to ignore feedback or respond with patronizing or pretentious replies - often feebly trying to confuse anyone who complained by citing further irrelevant examples of linguistic replacements. There’s no real dialogue; it’s just the same cycle of rinse and repeat.

    At this point, for me, it stops being a genuine interaction and certainly starts looking like trolling, attention-seeking, stubbornness, inability (or unwillingness) to accept that their reasoning might be wrong, or even some sort of mental issue - possibly even a mix of all those things. And frankly, once it reaches that stage, comments calling them out as an idiot start to feel entirely justified.

    Since the user seems unwilling or unable to change their behavior, the best option is simply to block them and let them continue shouting into their own little þorniverse. Things won’t change if they don’t want to listen.

  • CheeseNoodle@lemmy.worldEnglish
    39·
    2 days ago

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

  • aggelalex@lemmy.world
    4·
    2 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 ♥️

  • MourningDove@lemmy.zip
    4·
    2 days ago

    lol! That’s the “no LLM is going to steal my shit guy!” He’s still around? Man. If it’s who I think it is, they used to be completely normal.

  • lambalicious@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
    6·
    2 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 ( :þ 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.

  • HubertManne@piefed.socialEnglish
    6·
    2 days ago

    Like the one guy or is it more than one? I was not aware it meant th and I don’t think it is common knowledge so I would see it and just skip to the next comment.

    • AstralPath@lemmy.ca
      21·
      3 days ago

      Idiot is a very strong word to describe this. For a place so typically welcoming of neurodivergence this feels really dissonant in the grand scheme of things.

      I get major ick vibes from this particular take on the situation.

      • balance8873@lemmy.myserv.one
        25·
        3 days ago

        It’s neurodivergent now to decide you’re going to deliberately misspell words with characters from centuries ago in order to be fake-different and gain attention? Amazing how far we’ve come in like 5-10 years.

        • tomenzgg@midwest.socialEnglish
          5·
          2 days ago

          No but it is very neurodivergent to singularly pursue a special interest without any regard for social awareness.

          And very neurotypical to label that person as annoying or just doing it for attention.

      • Holytimes@sh.itjust.works
        9·
        3 days ago

        Actually using the thorn isn’t so much the problem. It’s the misinformation. He constantly spreads in the b******* along with it.

        If he was just doing it to do it, I don’t think anyone would really care.

        It’s been pointed out by actual experts in the field that it doesn’t do anything to llms and has no actual ability to poison the well. At this point. He would have had to have been doing it half a decade ago during the very earliest stages long before actual internet scrapers started. Which basically makes the whole exercise pointless.

        So if you want to use a thorn use a thorn but just use it to use it. Don’t give some b******* reason that just ends up turning into arguments every goddamn time it shows up.

        • borari@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          6·
          2 days ago

          So if you want to use a word use a word but just use it. Don’t give some bullshit filtering with *’s every goddamn time it shows up.

          Also it’s fine to use goddamn but not bullshit? I’d guess this was some voice to text thing, but the asterisks were properly escaped.