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Show HN: Hacker News em dash user leaderboard pre-ChatGPT

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358 points tkgally | 4 comments | 30 Aug 25 03:40 UTC | HN request time: 0.349s | source

The use of the em dash (—) now raises suspicions that a text might have been AI-generated. Inspired by a suggestion from dang [1], I created a leaderboard of HN users according to how many of their posts before November 30, 2022—that is, before the release of ChatGPT—contained em dashes. Dang himself comes in number 2—by a very slim margin.

Credit to Claude Code for showing me how to search the HN database through Google BigQuery and for writing the HTML for the leaderboard.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45053933

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lynndotpy ◴[30 Aug 25 15:17 UTC] No.45075379[source]▶
You might also want to rank by how often people use double hyphens-- like so.

I'm probably not alone here in being a longtime Linux user who started using a Macbook after the Apple Silicon transition, late 2022.

On Windows and Linux, inserting an em-dash is a laborious alt-code process. But on MacOS with an Apple keyboard, the `option` key acts like a tertiary shift, so an `–` em dash is just <option><->.

I didn't start using em-dashes (typing -- is just second nature to me and I'm still on Linux most of the time) when I got a Macbook, but I imagine some people in my shoes did.

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mananaysiempre ◴[30 Aug 25 15:25 UTC] No.45075429[source]▶
> On Windows and Linux, inserting an em-dash is a laborious alt-code process.

On Linux, you can set up a Compose key, after which an em-dash is compose, three hyphens (Macintosh: shift-option-hyphen), and an en-dash is compose, two hyphens, period (Macintosh: option-hyphen). Also, a left (resp. right) single (resp. double) quote is compose, less-than (resp. greater-than), typewriter single (resp. double) quote. That’s how I enter them.

You can also (alternatively or at the same time) set up a “Level 3 shift” aka “Alternate Characters Key” aka AltGr, which gets you quotes with one of the English International layouts or quotes as well as dashes with an English Macintosh layout.

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1. nullc ◴[30 Aug 25 21:19 UTC] No.45078106[source]▶
I started using them in 2008 or so (I think) when I created a custom keymap to added greek characters and nbsp. I stopped using them after MacOS changed to make them automatically because then their use started to be an obvious sign of being an apple user (see also: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2096459).

Someone recently created some long list of my reddit comments using them as a farcical claim of having used ChatGPT to author many dozens of 2010 comments.

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2. llbbdd ◴[30 Aug 25 22:12 UTC] No.45078443[source]▶
Why did someone go to that effort?
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3. nullc ◴[31 Aug 25 00:11 UTC] No.45079159[source]▶
I'm one of the early developers of Bitcoin. This made me a target of a conman pretending to be Bitcoin's creator. The conman eventually filed a trillion dollars worth of vexatious lawsuits against myself and others, and we defeated him in court rather profoundly. During the litigation ChatGPT came out and he immediately started using it to create fake evidence, much to his detriment. He also used to to write his witness statements (unlawfully) and his appeals, resulting in (insubstantial) sanctions. He's subsequently gone full whispering earring, pumping out whole novels worth of chatgpt glurge every few days, in an apparent desperate attempt to show that the stuff people identified as chatgpt was really him.

He has a cult following who believe him to be a victim of a lizard jew conspiracy or something and who are quite displeased by people mocking him for continually putting out obvious AI slop. And clearly the people who are accusing him of slopping it up must be doing so themselves... plus then there are people making fun of these people.

Of course, emdash use was not actually a meaningful factor in any of the determination of chatgpt use in court... but it's a signal that even fairly unsophisticated people notice and often presume underlies claims of AI (ab)use.

TLDR: morons consider me their enemy

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4. llbbdd ◴[31 Aug 25 19:10 UTC] No.45086079{3}[source]▶
Thank you for explaining, that's insane and I'm sorry you have to deal with that.