RSSHappy Birthday, Smiley!
By Robert Birming in Blogs & Internet on Sep 18, 2007 at 7:23 am
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Kct
I love smileys and I wouldn’t know to live without it!
Happy birthday!
Saito
And I was the first one to use the acronym l-o-l to express feelings of laughter over instant messages.
Adam Stanhope
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?
Stacyj
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
Miss Cellania
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.
Adam Stanhope
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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