YMMV. Personally my circles (20s-40s Seattleite nerds) say "Hearts" to each other on a regular basis. Depending on context, it expands to either "I love you" or

YMMV. Personally my circles (20s-40s Seattleite nerds) say "Hearts" to each other on a regular basis. Depending on context, it expands to either "I love you" or "I love the thing you just said", just as if we were typing "<3" into an instant messenger window. That said, the spurious asterisk in 'diaspora' does look pretty inexplicable, and needs way too much explanation to people who haven't drunk the kool-aide already. Add in the fact that 'diaspora' is never capitalized, even if it begins a sentence, and you're kind of way off into the eccentric orthography zone.