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And if you're already assuming unicode (which all these "plaintext" tools do), why aren't we just using unicode bullet points instead of dashes and *? Why not just use unicode bold and italics instead of *hacks*?

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It is a question of the input method first and, as the sibling commenter said, grepping second. Fuzzy search could handle "-" as: "–", "—", "―", "‒" and other dashes. I input slightly more special characters on my phone as it is easier. On my computer I remember how I can easily write ° (on Linux and ChromeOS - Shift-AltGr-0) so I use it more. I don't know how to easily input a bullet point and I am too lazy to open a character table app every time it is needed.

In a way it is the same with programming languages. I think there are now programming languages supporting unicode operators for example, like =, ≠, ∧, ∨, ∩, ∪. But they suffer from the same problem. How to input them, how to search for them?

> Why not just use unicode bold and italics instead of hacks?

To be able to search and grep?

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