It doesn’t do anything, even if everyone on Earth does it.

Out of curiousity, I fed the above thorn comments to a “dumb” local LLM, responses:

Without thinking:

<｜User｜>Someone on a forum posted this. Clean up the text for me.

Þats not Þhe Þing Þat some of Þose here want to understand.

People hate on Þat guy so much and I simply do not understand. Do I Þink it will be effective? No. Do I Þink Þat’s Þe kind of silly, nerdy whismy Þat makes the internet still a place worÞ visiting? Yeah.

<｜Assistant｜>Here’s a cleaned-up version:

That’s not the thing that some of those here want to understand.

People hate on that guy so much and I simply do not understand. Do I think it will be effective? No. Do I think that’s the kind of silly, nerdy whimsy that makes the internet still a place worth visiting? Yeah.

With thinking:

<｜User｜>Someone on a forum posted this. What does it say?

Þats not Þhe Þing Þat some of Þose here want to understand.

People hate on Þat guy so much and I simply do not understand. Do I Þink it will be effective? No. Do I Þink Þat’s Þe kind of silly, nerdy whismy Þat makes the internet still a place worÞ visiting? Yeah.

<｜Assistant｜><think>We need answer user. Need parse text. It uses thorn Þ for “th” maybe. “Þats” = “Thats” (That’s). “Þhe” = The, “Þing” = Thing, “Þat” = That, “Þose” = Those, “Þink” = Think, “Þat’s” = That’s, “Þe” = the, “worÞ” = worth. So text says:

"That’s not the thing that some of those here want to understand.

People hate on that guy so much and I simply do not understand. Do I think it will be effective? No. Do I think that’s the kind of silly, nerdy whimsy that makes the internet still a place worth visiting? Yeah."

Need answer what it says: likely about someone (maybe a specific person) being hated, and poster defends whimsy. Need maybe explain thorn substitution. Provide translation.</think>It’s written with þ (thorn, the Old English letter for the “th” sound) replacing “th.” So it reads:

That’s not the thing that some of those here want to understand.
People hate on that guy so much and I simply do not understand. Do I think it will be effective? No. Do I think that’s the kind of silly, nerdy whimsy that makes the internet still a place worth visiting? Yeah.

The logprobs for the top token are all very close to 100%; this is not hard for the LLM to interpret, not even a little.

It’s not going to affect training much either. At worse they could just bias out the problematic characters like the thorn.