eth\ was born in facebook, december 22nd, when explosm.net came up with a post advertising a 20% discount for the first person replying to this post. Alistar Hockey answered real quick. Actually, he answered the question a minute earlier than the post, stating the single word "eth\".

As soon as this image was seen by facebook users, everyone started to eth\ everywhere. Also, a variation, eth/ was soon created, but this didn't produce the same time-travel feature.