i thought that
was enough to show you that it is a joke.
My mind has a tendency to just subconsciously filter out emoticons, and they're too small to even read on bitcointalk anyway.
I guess this will forever remain a mystery, but not a biggie. Thanks again to everyone here who tried to help, and I'll thank you on behalf of AfricanHunter for all the merit he received (lol), which is appropriately more than most currently-active signature campaign spammers have, or will ever, earn.
Going to lock the thread since even Theymos himself responded.
Also: I did restart my browser, but I'm still getting that same message.