a field guide to “w”, kusa, and 草

Japanese www is laughter: warai (笑), clipped to a single w and stacked for volume. A wall of wwww looks like blades of grass, so people started writing 草 — literally “grass” — to mean the same thing.

Escalate to 大草原 (“vast grassland”) and you have hit full ROFL. So when a grim thread abruptly grows a lawn, now you know what is being planted.