this post was submitted on 01 Oct 2023
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this is true but it doesn't explain why;
this is the case because IM clients will often put a colon between the username and the message, so simply writing ) gives you "username : )". it then escaped simple IM clients and now the russosphere uses it even in the absence of the colon.
Yeah, it's one of my favorite little historical developments on the internet. A totally local convention that made perfect sense in the context of mIRC and similar things, yet persisted as an independent meaningful token.
Did it make sense with mIRC? IRC clients wrap the name in angle-brackets, not a colon. This sounds more like AIM.
I remember it with mIRC, but it might have been a false memory, you're right! Then again, it might have been some custom styling that enabled it?
Anyway, it definitely is the case for stuff like ICQ (I double-checked 😺).
/me shrugs