<4

My new favorite emoticon: <4.

You're probably familiar with "<3". But listen to this: Nelson Minar reports that "variants include < / 3 for a broken heart, <$ to convey a financial motive for love, and <4 as the superlative of <3."

?!?!

After reporting this finding to a dear friend today, she responded, "Less-than-four! Wait! The picture becomes a symbol which becomes content which becomes its own text!" Or something like that. Anyway, the point is: once emoticons demand literary analysis, you know they've arrived.

And oh. They've arrived.

Via BoingBoing.