| Comments on Sunday 18 January 2004: |
I'm sure we all know how smileys are an unnecessary and possibly damaging extension to the written language - that conveying emotion vaguely through pictograms is less compelling and less evocative than it would be to encompass the emotion in the words you use. Or so I thought! But these days one can get 2000 smileys free! And oh boy, are they the most useful smileys you can possibly imagine. Look at them!Note - the 'click here' aspect of the ad won't actually work, because I don't want people to start actually using these monsters. Anyway, as I was saying - no more will we have to painstakingly compose letters such as the following, when smileys can encompass all. My darling levitating frog,[23:18] |
| Gecko |
| Hilarious. Yes, smilies are incredibly annoying. It's so much clearer to see a frowning head floating in the middle of my email than to read that whoever wrote to me is upset and why they are upset. I love trying to figure out why there is a picture of a rose following certain comments. And of course, all of those "free smilies" are so very useful. |
| AttackOfTheSpam |
| Gasp! You forgot the flasher? How COULD you? And the little brown uncertain man! Poor little brown uncertain man; he feels unwanted and depressed. He will now take lots of Prozac and eventually overdose and die. Then you will party with the pimp and two alcoholic smileys, eventually drowning your sorrows at having killed the poor little brown uncertain man. I'm terribly sorry. That was random. Hormones are such odd little buggers. |
| Phil |
| I love that as I too share your pedantry when it comes to use of language. Do you like me tut at poor grammar in graffiti and inarticulate muggers. 'gis your dosh' |
| Berta |
| What is worse than that little angry face for an e-mail is when you get a whole string of them, with the occasional leet between. If people are going to revert to pictograms, we might as well use hieroglyphics; at least they were rather attractive and unlikely to cause seizures. |
| Digi |
| It's hard to say this without seeming insulting, even when adding the following phrase; I don't mean to be insulting, but Phil, if you're writting things advocating the proper use of written-english, you should probably have question marks at the end of questions, and perhaps the occasional comma. It'll give your point more credibility. On the other hand, it could be extremely subtle post-modern irony, in which case the joke's on me - the twat who responded. I've had worse things on me than jokes. Never a curse though. |
| redTEETH |
| Well played. Hat. |
| RavenBlack |
| Spam - no, I didn't forget either of them. The 'flasher' doesn't look like they're flashing to me, since the buttocks remain visible the whole time. That's the clasping of buttocks with hands. And the 'uncertain' one is having a stroke. |
| C. Copperpot |
| I concur, those smileys a waste of time. But the old-fashioned text smileys are a great way to show emotion in a hurry (because now we're all in a hurry, don't ask)! :D |
| AttackOfTheSpam |
| Ah! Terribly sorry. I suppose things get lost in translation from time to time. |
| RavenBlack |
| Evidently the smileys don't render the full text obsolete after all, since you wouldn't have realised I meant "argh, I'm having a stroke" if I'd used the smiley, and so the ambulance would never have arrived. |
| Sam |
| Have you seen the vast range they have over at h2g2? Ah well. William Gibson had the right idea. In my experience they never get used for their intended purposes.... |
| Qwertyphobia |
| I thought they were bad enough at first, then realised I was missing the full horror of animation. Browsing the web through the rose-tinted spectacles of disabled gif animations is an experience not to be taken for granted. Note to Digi: if you'd littered your post with smileys it would have been obvious that no insult was intended. See, they do have a purpose :) |
| arjuna |
| oh, my belly hurts. thanks for the wicked good laugh. |