Love’s ties into the Clock Crew are so deeply rooted that it’s almost impossible to tell where it began, but some early examples of it on Newgrounds are White Guy meets Black Guy and Number 1, both of which established a peace and love approach to flash animating.

Sometimes called huggles. Expressed with by putting the person’s name in squiggly brackets. Picked up from an old internet adage by PineappleClock, it’s since become something of a Clock Crew staple. To show fondness for another person, post their name in brackets. It’s like a platonic hippy hug, only on the internet. The antipode of hugs is putting the person’s name in reversed brackets, which I heavily discourage using unless you want to look like a douche, or have something more relevant to add.

Tilt your head to your right. It’s a heart. Post it to express gratitude or appreciation for another person, place, or thing. Sometimes used as a “just kidding.” Rarely actually used for personal affection. Never used sarcastically. The antipode of <3 is </3, as well as some other variations. This is not a very nice thing to post.

One of the CC basics that I feel it’s important to get back into is loving our enemies. If you get a bad review from an anti-clock, there’s no negative response that could beat out an affirmative one. If someone’s threatening to gouge your eyes out, don’t point out that you can’t do that over the internet. Tell them you love them. Give them some huggles. Counter-point them by linking to some of the ClockCrew’s essential movies. Don’t get steamed; it’s the internet.
On Newgrounds, we play it like Gandhi did. We’re internet hippies. We’re Martin Luthor King Jr. Don’t snap out with some attack on their character. If they keep it up, they’ll realise how rotten they’re being and ease up. Really. It works. A lot of our 3rd and 4th generation clocks were former anti-clocks who turned coats because of the messege of love.