Our pledge to our readers: Here at
our fine blog uggabugga, we will not
fool around with engage in the irritating practice of
putting lines through text strikeouts in
a lame try at an attempt to be funny.
It seems to be popular lately, and we hate it.
posted by Quiddity at 3/25/2005 11:18:00 AM
I always thought it was annoying^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hamusing when people used to do this on usenet too. It was funny for just about as long as smileys were.
It's certainly much older than that. The BS control code (which mapped to ^H) sequence first appeared in the 1965 revision of ASCII.
Any terminal that didn't properly understand that control code would actually print it instead of backspacing.
So it's a really really really old joke, but I think it's still funny :D
Er, should have noted that USENET dates to 1979, thus explaining the reference point to which I was comparing the age of the joke.
Actually, that practice goes back to print science fiction fanzines to at least the 1950's, where humorous words
would be typed, and then crossed out legibly with slashes, when typing up ditto masters and mimeograph stencils.
