Tilde Shortcuts?

[Servinjesus1]

What are these tilde shortcuts, are they a WSL thing? I can't seem to find any description on why these variables are defined to what look like frequently used locations:

I've looked around Tilde Expansion in bash, Tilde Shortcuts, and tried PS4='+$BASH_SOURCE> ' BASH_XTRACEFD=7 bash -xl 7>tildetracking.log and find /etc -type f -exec grep -Fw THE_VAR {} + to see if they're environment variables defined at some point.

[Servinjesus1]

OK I've deciphered that they are shortcuts to users' $HOME directories as part of Tilde Expansion to a given user. I didn't know programs needed users/groups to do things. Why some have trailing slashes and others do not escapes me, but I've solved my original question. Sorry.