It doesn't read as emphasis to me. It reads like the person is trying hard not to curse, and they think "crap" is a curse word. It's a little bit adorable, like I'm reading a comment from an obedient child.

I think a string of non-alphanumeric characters would work much better here, like "Once you have allowed that proprietary @#$&% into your C++ codebase”

Leaves more to the imagination.

In any context I've seen, asterisks are for wrapping formatting and said formatting it to add emphasis. So being in the habit of typing `emphasised phrase`, for italics - regardless of whether the platform parses markdown/similar formatting, e.g. SMS.

To have an unclosed asterisk replacing characters in a word? I've only ever seen that as a way to bypass censorship. This spans communications from people currently in their 40s down to 20.

i do this to put emphasis, i always type "h*ck".

(although it is a half-joke since it's definitely not a curse word imo)

like for example, c*nt?

I certainly dislike how everyone on YouTube is saying “SA” and “unalive” and “corn”.

It’s one thing if it’s some funny commentary channel avoiding those words, but what bothers me is the true crime YouTubers. In the subject of true crime, rape and murder are just things that are probably going to come up, and when they refuse to use the appropriate language, it comes off as infantilizing, which is weird considering that my actual YouTube account is over 18, let alone the viewer using it.

Advertisers ruin everything, I guess.

HN definitely doesn't give a crap about that word.

Your comment only makes sense in context if you believe in a deity who is too dumb to understand the difference between cr*p and crap. I for one do not worship a Bayesian spam filter.

[dead]

To use a literal asterisk on HN, do ** or \*. Your single usage in two places instead turned the majority of the post italic.

I'd consider that a joke - but also zero issue using any words talking in front of kids. You might wish to explain them anyways.

"Daddy, what does cr*p mean?" Kids aren't stupid and this self-censorship isn't protecting anyone from anything.

(if a platform is serious about Bad Words for whatever reason (moral?) they would also forbid character replacements; ultimately it's the intent, not the word itself, that they try to steer with rules like that)

I am arguing that they would ask that anyway.

I guess I never understood censorship when it’s plainly obvious what you’re censoring. Anyone who can read will clearly know that it said “crap”, so I don’t see how it’s fundamentally different than just saying the word. You still put the word into my brain.