I thought gazing upon the great goatse was a rite of passage for everyone online. It was a sort of hyper aggressive RickRoll of its day. I guess the wild west days really are on the outs. I noticed you spelled it with two "e"s in another comment; it's just one. It's from the phonetically named domain goatse.cx. Wikipedia has an article without the photo but a detailed description that will allow you to understand the connotation of the =()= if you want to follow up without getting Internet PTSD.
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... this is supposed to look like an ASCII emoticon for a type of beard called a goatee.
That's not the story I heard. Google can be your (in this case, perhaps rather ambivalent) friend here, but be careful: some things, once seen, cannot be unseen. :)
Give a man a fish: <%-{-{-{-<
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