Very important (not really) markdown special-handling case: the shruggy

[mattdm (Matthew Miller)]

So there’s this little internet chat expression: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ – the classic “shruggy”.

Tragically, Discourse’s markdown sees the first \ as an escape, and we get

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

A MISSING ARM.

Poor shruggy!

Now I know that I can mis-use `` as I did above, or throw in a couple of extra escapes

¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯ → ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

but people replying via email will not necessarily know to do this – and those getting the message via email will also not have the escapes rendered.

I’m sure there are many more important things, but … maybe there could be a special case? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[TheBestPessimist]

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

`¯\_(ツ)_/¯`

[sam (Sam Saffron)]

Special cases get you into a nightmare situation long term. That said… you can set up watched words to replace the “broken” version with your desired full shruggy.

No need for a new feature, you have it already

[mattdm (Matthew Miller)]

Can I do that on my hosted plan?

[sam (Sam Saffron)]

Yeah it is a core feature in your admin panel

[mattdm (Matthew Miller)]

Hmm, so… I added it to the Replace list…

and it works with the Test button, but does not seem to with actual posts. Any idea? Important shruggy feature! - #3 by mattdm - Fedora Discussion

[david (David Taylor)]

Looks like the watched words are applied after the escaping, so you’ll need to replace the ‘broken’ version with the correct version

(temporarily) set up here on Meta: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[mattdm (Matthew Miller)]

Ah, interesting. I guess there’s a bug there, since the test doesn’t show that.