Lol, it's become tradition.
On a news article, there's always someone who starts out with an emoticon only comment, and then everyone else by reflex seem to go in the bandwagon and some even come up with a different variation of the emoticon that are fanmade by users. Everywhere around dA is supposed to be nuts. What with the llamas, mudkips and plz account 8D
Yeh that and they're just overly excited.