Happy Birthday, Smiley!

1. Kct
   September 18th, 2007 at 7:36 am

   I love smileys and I wouldn’t know to live without it!
   Happy birthday!

2. Saito
   September 18th, 2007 at 7:52 am

   And I was the first one to use the acronym l-o-l to express feelings of laughter over instant messages.

3. Adam Stanhope
   September 18th, 2007 at 8:22 am

   Color me skeptical about this one.

   I can’t be the only person here who was a teen in the early 80s who can remember smilies being around prior to 1982.

   Anyone?

4. Stacyj
   September 18th, 2007 at 10:08 am

   You know who else has a birthday today? Samuel Johnson! Mister ‘A Dictionary of the English Language’ himself - it is indeed a doubly-momentous day for language and communication!

   As to the smileys, it’s interesting to think about how different online communication would be today without them. I wonder what shorthand might have popped up to indicate, “Please don’t shoot me in the face, that was supposed to be a joke” if it weren’t for smileys? Somehow “j/k” just isn’t nearly as enjoyable …

   (I must take issue, though, with the “newer” smileys thrust upon us by IM progams - the first time I used a smiley in AIM 6.0 and all those giant transparent happy faces suddenly cascaded across my screen it startled the bejeezus out of me - simple and unsurprising is GOOD imo when it comes to smileys =P

5. Miss Cellania
   September 18th, 2007 at 1:58 pm

   Adam, if you’re thinking about the yellow face smiley pictured, yes, that’s a lot older. This anniversary is for the typed emoticon smiley. The history of the internet emoticon is rather well documented.

6. Adam Stanhope
   September 19th, 2007 at 9:03 am

   Hi, Miss C.

   I am guilty of not being a CAREFUL READER.

   Yes - I see NOW that the emoticon is what was being discussed, not the yellow smiley face in a circle.

   I promise to be more careful in the future. hehe

   

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