Why?

It looks nice and has been a staple in hacker culture for decades, long before we had rich text and were just chatting on IRC.

Also it looks like _underlined_ text

It doesn't look nice at all to me. Real emphasis looks way nicer, that's its purpose. Now that we have rich text, why not utilize it?

I use both and will continue to do so. You're trying to lecture people who have been on HN for more than 10 years how "we" do stuff around here.

There's so much wrong with this reply I won't even bother trying to respond, I feel the negativity of this comment pour through my screen