i’ve been searching for a while and thought i’d ask some experts.
sláinte,
j
I’ve seen
\m/
\
which is sign language for “I love you”.
just \m/ I’m not sure about though.
It’s the rock-star hands thing. Y’know, you do that with one hand while you’re headbanging and holding your lighter up in the other hand. Or the “Go Longhorns/UT” thing, but I think most people use it for rock-star.
Stay fucking metal! \m/ \m/
Does that help?
thanks to all; it’s great to have such a good resource to help me better understand my son and his friends.
sláinte,
j
Take your hand and hold it with middle and ring fingers curled down and index, pinky, and thumb extended.
You have just made the American Sign Language shorthand symbol for “I Love You” – sort of a portmanteauing of the fingerspelling symbols for I, L, and Y.
Now, represent this in Leetish: \m/_
Make sense now?
It’s also the hand gesture that Doctor Strange used to cast most of his spells. Unless, of course, he was just telling his mystical foes that he actually loved them.
Yeah, it’s the rockstar thing. Apparently it somehow means ‘666’ (in that there’s 3 6 shapes in the hand sign), but I don’t know if that was the intent from the beginning or if someone realized later. It also looks like something with horns. It doesn’t refer to anything actually satanic and doesn’t mean anything about the people who make the sign; it’s a countercultural/rebellious/generally bada** thing associated with heavy metal.
Ronnie James Dio can take credit – or at least he has taken credit – for introducing this “devil horns salute” to heavy metal. He took it from his Italian grandmother, who would often use the sign to ward off the “Evil Eye”. (Holding your hand with the fingers pointing up and the palm faced towards you is warding off the Evil Eye; pointing the fingers at someone is giving them the Evil Eye.)
Anyhoo, when RJD took over lead vocals in Black Sabbath, he wanted something that was similar to Ozzy’s famous “peace” sign, but different. So, there you go.
Now we just need someone to explain exactly what the “Evil Eye” is. 
Well, you could probably listen to his song “Evil Eyes.”
On a related note, I’ve seen:
m
/
used to represent a heart.
That looks like an ice cream cone. Kind of.
It works better on pages with less leading between lines.
Why do you think they called him Doctor Strange??? 
Looks like the touch o’ death.
I find that on IRC and anywhere that single-space fonts are used, you get the best effect using periods for thumbs:
\m/. .\m/
RAWK!!!
\m/_ _\m/
Looks better to me. As a representation of the Hawaiian love thing.
Oh man, between this and the other 1337 thread, I’m going to be even more of a loser than I thought.
Like, hey man why do you make people call you dread Dormamu? Could it be that you’re secretly, like, afraid of affection man? That if people got to know the real you, they’d like call you dear Dormamu, or daddy bear Dormamu? By the ribbons of righteous Raggador, love’s nothin’ to be afraid of man. I was all caught up in the plastic fantastic Madison avenue scene until my guru, the Ancient One, like showed me that love is what’s really important. Now, I have this groovy pad in the village and my cute squeeze Clea has liked moved in. She’s teaching me yoga and stuff.
So I think, maybe, you wouldn’t be so obsessed with needing to take over earth if you just chilled and found a chick who’s into guys with their heads on fire.
“Bart, don’t use the Touch of Death on your sister.”
Plus if you turn it palm up it becomes the Spider-man web shooter thing.