[ahoge]

Reddit, Stack Overflow, GitHub/BitBucket (readmes, tickets, wikis), and it's also used by a couple of CMSs, blog platforms, and static website generators.

Virtually all of the text I write is Markdown. Even this very comment is written in a subset of Markdown (and so is yours).

[adamhyde]

Yes and notice how few have used it even here. Most replies are plain text.

[ahoge]

Paragraphs and emphasis are frequently used here.

[adamhyde]

paragraphs are plain text :)

[ahoge]

No, they are not. It's not directly spit into an element with white-space: pre-line or white-space: pre.

It's converted into paragraphs. Just like stuff inside asterisks is converted into emphasis.

[adamhyde]

sigh. plain text paragraphs cant be claimed to be invented by markdown. sorry. good try tho.

[ahoge]

Invented? You are missing the point.

The comments are written in a markup language (Markdown, UBB, whatever...) which is then converted to HTML.

It's transformed and not displayed as-is.