The Curse Of The Smiley
Tuesday, October 13, 2009 I have fallen into a horrible trap, and I am having an awful time pulling myself out of it.
You see, once upon a time on the internet, people got their underwear all twisted into knots, because if the person whose words they were reading didn't take the time to write clearly, and sometimes at length, it was easy to mistake their tone for being what it wasn't. Someone would write an e-mail in response to a joke that was sent to them that would read: Very funny, which would play in the receiver's head either as That was hilarious! or as That was not funny at all and you should be ashamed of yourself. And then, someone invented this to help clear up the miscommunication:
:)
The smiley face made out of a colon and a right bracket meant that people could write Very funny :) and not end up making someone else think that they were a passive aggressive jerk who they should maybe disinvite from their plans to share birthday drinks with little paper umbrellas in them.
Until this year, I mostly avoided the :) — along with its other smiley cousins :( and :0 and ;) and so on — because I like to use my words. Also, they seem cutesy to me, and I'm not very much into cutesy, unless it's the Cute Overload kind of cutesy, because who can resist piglets being hosed down? But I digress.
Over the last year, I have become somewhat lax with my desire to communicate without punctuation abuse. It all started with an e-mail I wrote while I was in a hurry in which, rather than explain my excitement about going out for drinks on Thursday or choose to use a simple exclamation mark, I tacked on a little smiley face. I felt a little queasy and a touch disappointed in myself, but I let it go. It was but a small blight, all things considered, or so I thought.
Fast forward to the present day. I drop these little faces all over the internet without a thought. I even add them to sentences when they offer no discernible value. I type things like I really like your sweater :) and I have been missing you lately :( and even That make me want to punch someone in the throat >:(. My words make my intentions obvious, and yet I still do it. I have now gone from being too lazy to type a few extra clarifying words to cutesifying even my negative statements with abandon.
These emoticons breed much more than cute, though. They breed paranoia. I have come to rely on them so deeply to convey my tone that I fear leaving one out of an e-mail or a weblog comment for fear that my words will be misinterpreted. For example, I was just over at Fluid Pudding and left the following comment after she said that she was thankful for Canadians:
And the Canadians are thankful for you, I wrote.
I had to struggle with myself about whether to add a :) to let Angela know that I didn't mean that Canadians weren't thankful for her, which is ridiculous, because Canadians are nothing if not thankful for Angela Pudding. Every time I write a note to someone on the internet now, I fear that they will think I am being snide or insincere without that little emotional endnote, and it's ridiculous.
So, I am going on an smiley diet. I will swallow my punctuation-bred paranoia, try to use my words well, and stop cutesifying what needs not be cutesified. It pains me, but it must be done. I do not need to allow the fear that a comment that might cause Angela Pudding to think that Canadians hate her to keep me from more important tasks like keeping up with my Scrabble frenzy on Facebook.
Plus, I have more important punctuation worries to keep me up at night, like whether or not I am a bit too loosey goosey with the commas or if that is just a Britishism we Canadians hold onto because it's awesome.
UPDATED: Someone just dropped by my apartment offering to share a brief Bible thought with me about families, and jumbled up with all the other choice words I was thinking in response to the interruption were things like >:| and :<. I kind of hate myself right now. Why couldn't I just be compelled to kick kittens or something?
UPDATED AGAIN: I ended up in a conversation on Facebook and Twitter last week, thanks to Dad Gone Mad, that entailed making up the punctuation-based equivalent of a drawing of a vagina. It was decided that ({*}) won.
UPDATED FOR A THIRD TIME FOR REASONS OF TRANSPARENCY: I did kick a kitten today, but it was mostly by accident, because they always get underfoot, and she was trying to make a break for the outside when the Bible verse lady came to the door.
UPDATED FOR A FOURTH TIME, BECAUSE I HAVE PROBLEMS: Bible toting ladies makes Schmutzies kick kittens; hence, Jesus makes baby kittens cry.
Reader Comments (22)
I struggle with this too. I try to limit it to Facebook/Twitter and blog comments only. If I can keep them out of my own actual blog posts, that's something. And something is enough!
I embrace the smiley. Twitter, Facebook, e-mail, even blog posts are more a form of oral communication than written communication. Since we have facial and verbal cues with oral communication, I'm okay with littering my writings with emoticons.
:-)
You are consistently a highlight in my day.
From an American thankful for Schmutzie.
That's true. Jesus hates kittens and makes them cry. I
'm glad someone else finally put those two together.
My personal favorite is the wink and a smile ;-) followed closely by the big grin :-D
Ah hahahahahahaha!
Good god Schmutzie...the laughing, it hurts.
You know, I know that smiley thing is a PROBLEM (of mine) but I never thought to write an entire post about it. You ARE good with words! Seriously!!
And here's where I'd add a smiley just so that you know I like you. But I'll resist. It would be like smoking right in front of you. I won't tempt ya!
Oh, god I do this too. Since I am a fairly snarky fool by nature, I depend on the smilies to make me look like less of a bitch.
It totally doesn't even work for me.
Brilliant. ;)
Infallible logic.
I'm all about the ;) but until I read your post I hadn't stopped to consider when this addition started. It came on rather gradually and now I don't know if I can stop. Good grief it took me months to get over not drinking Coke now I have to try to get over my excessive emoticon usage. Oh and Update #3 made me laugh out loud.
I fear I may be a corrupting influence, seeing as I make faces all the time in RL - I can hardly keep them out of my online life. But even I often go back and edit down the smilies to a scant one or two per email. Only one or two?! Good grief. I've been subsumed to the smiley.
The smileys are something that I find distracting. I don't use them and sometimes have to stop what I'm reading to try to decipher the emoticons.
Wanna throw off the Bible people without being rude? Tell them they are the second (or third) pair (group, person) to come to your house this week. They get flustered and leave.
Were you saying something? I can't get past the piglets. ;)
I felt the same for a long time, but at some point adopted them. Although only the classic smiley face. But I knew I had a problem when I was handwriting a thank you note and slipped in one of those suckers... I got really angry at my brain for that one :)
I used to hate the smiley and all its cousins, but I found that people didn't pick up on my sarcasm very well in writing. And I've since found myself using the damn smiley all the damn time to let people know I'M KIDDING! CHILL OUT!
I try not to use smiley's, because I don't want to be mistaken for young or newbie-ish, which for some reason is what I have it ingrained in my head as. Probably because I remember being on the internet back in 1998, going all >=] crazy in chat rooms. But there have been plenty of times where I've considered it, though.
You're so brave, wrassling with your emoticon dependency. We're all here for you! (I have more of a parentheses problem. I just love using them for sotto voce additions.) Love your words.
Unfortunately, emoticons just seem to be part of the on-line dictionary. (What did we ever do when we wrote letters, to convey our meanings/feelings?)
They've been absorbed into acceptable language, in much the same way verbalization (making verbs of nouns) has been. What's the use of fighting? ;-)
P.S. What do you have against Bible-toting ladies, that upsets you?
Debbie Rodgers, I don't appreciate anyone from any religion entering my personal space to evangelize. I don't just have a thing for people with Bibles.
Dude!! I also have a hard time with the smiley face thing. Everyone I work with is insane with the smiley's and I am not. I hope that I don't send one and then my life goes down hill.
lovely, i just added another emo backgrounds 4 my blog
http://tinyurl.com/y8swe6h