Honey, Smileys Have Taken Over the Internet!

smiley
Originally uploaded by sjanani.

Yes they really have! I seem to see them wherever I go. Initially they were cute, I remember when I first IMed I was very excited to see my keystrokes get translated automatically to happy yellow faces. And then someone sent me an ecard filled with bouncy faces smiling all over the screen and that made my day.

Now this



stares at me wherever I go and is totally uncute! mwah!

I realise that I stand accused too. I liberally sprinkle :-) and :-( in whatever I write and sometimes with extra braces for added emphasis too. This is how my typical email looks like

Hey ABC! :-) Great to hear from you! :-) So how is blah blah doing? Still ..... for her? ;-) I knew zzzzz zzzzz when yyyy!! :-) Pity about that qwerty asdfgh though! :-((( yada yada yada :-) Gtg now, lotsa work to do! :-(((
Ok take care. :-)

And now that I think about it are they really that bad? How else am I going to get my toothy grin on paper? Agreed I don't want "10000 FREE smileys" doing gyrations that I wouldn't dream of doing in real life, but the occasional emoticon gets my seal of approval! When I read something from someone with smileys in them, I picture them smiling while they type it and hey that's a nice feeling. They can be pretty useful too, you can get away with the most libelous of comments if it's followed by a smiley - that way you get to say what you want to say albeit with the "I was just kidding" tone. :-)

There are emoticons for about everything nowadays, especially with the newest Yahoo messenger. My favourite is this MIB one - no smile, no frown, just a pair of coolers. Another cute one is the praying one. (Nopes, don't know the key strokes of either). Somehow the classy elegance of Yahoo emoticons is missing in other places that support smileys - orkut for instance. Yeah its round, yellow and has a pair of eyes and a mouth, but not the same thing!

Btw, I got this while checking my mail. Quick go and vote now! :-)