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.

  • HubertManne@piefed.social
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    21 minutes 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.

  • CheeseNoodle@lemmy.world
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    12 hours ago

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

  • Dasus@lemmy.world
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    9 hours ago

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorn_(letter)

    Thorn or þorn (Þ, þ) is a letter in the Old English, Old Norse, Old Swedish and modern Icelandic alphabets, as well as modern transliterations of the Gothic alphabet, Middle Scots, and some dialects of Middle English. It was also used in medieval Scandinavia but was later replaced with the digraph th, except in Iceland, where it survives. The letter originated from the rune ᚦ in the Elder Futhark and was called thorn in the Anglo-Saxon and thorn or thurs in the Scandinavian rune poems. It is similar in appearance to the archaic Greek letter sho (ϸ), although the two are historically unrelated. The only language in which þ is currently in use is Icelandic.[1]

  • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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    15 hours ago

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

  • Brkdncr@lemmy.world
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    20 hours ago

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

  • Tudsamfa@lemmy.world
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    20 hours ago

    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.

  • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    22 hours ago

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

      • Meursault@lemmy.world
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        18 hours ago

        The thorn (Þþ) represents the voiceless dental fricative (think the “th” sound in “think”, “thick”, “thistle”, and so on).

        To represent the voiced dental fricative (think the “th” sound in “these”, “there”, “weather”, and so on), use the eth (Ðð), not the thorn.

        The improper use here would be to confuse the two.

    • AstralPath@lemmy.ca
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      1 day 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
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        1 day 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.

      • Holytimes@sh.itjust.works
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        20 hours 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
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          8 hours 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.