Hacker News Reader

Comment by jkahrs595 | Hacker News Reader

Th emdash is not something I use ever (before or after AI slop), but telling people not to use it because it’s associated with slop is not the way.

It’s like when people tried to tell everyone to stop using the ok symbol with their hands because a small group of hateful fucks pretended it meant something else. It only switches meaning if you let it, and stop using it yourself.

What happens when AI adopts something else? Do we give that up too?

With all of that said, this guy is definitely AI lol. He’s gotta be trolling us by doubling down.

View on HN

> because a small group of hateful fucks pretended it meant something else.

That was a 4chan op designed to make leftists overreact and look stupid. There were also like a dozen other common hand signals with similar contrived meanings, but that was the only one they fell for.

> 4chan op

Yet another successful op I can't explain to many. Here's an OK summary: https://mashable.com/article/ok-hand-gesture-hate-symbol-ant...

I mean you would stop using the OK Hands thing when trying to communicate with a group that has for (possibly arbitrary) reasons decided that that symbol is bad, and thus anything you say is bad, right?

At least temporarily until you got synced up with that group?

There is a place for the strategy of just continuing to use something and push through the noise there, but the em dash is not in that place. Common perception of it has too much momentum you cannot overcome like that, which - at the time of writing - makes it a bad choice.

How it will look like in 12 months we shall see, but today, I would advise against using it (without acknowledgement) in texts that talk about AI.

No, that’s my whole point. I would not stop. If someone tries to attribute malice to something I do that has none, I might explain to them how misguided they are, but I’m not going to give in just because someone can’t be bothered to understand context.

I think it’s fine to use as one of many signals to identify AI (not the only) but, again, avoiding its use is not going to solve anything.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com