In cyberspace, no one can hear you scream.
Or laugh.
Or feel your kiss.
Or see you wink.
So people who use computers to talk to each other have fought
the cold, inhuman nature of their silicon message networks by
designing new ways to add emotion, sarcasm, irony and humor.
Called "emoticons" -- for emotion icons -- or "smileys" after
the insipid "Have a Nice Day" happy faces, they started off as
shorthand ways to add something like tone of voice or body language
to keyboarded messages.
For example ;-) means "I'm saying this with a wink." (Look at
it sideways to understand why.)
A tear of sympathy might look like :'-)
To express befuddlement, try %-)
Shocked and amazed is :-o
And a kiss is just a :-*
There are now more than 600 of them, according to two new
dictionaries of emoticons, with more being created everyday,
including =:o] for "Clinton," :-)8< for "slut" and *>--<- for "Bill
the Cat run over by a truck."
The very fact that emoticons had to be invented speaks worlds
about this burgeoning but passionless medium. After all, when
letters were written on typewriters or with quill pens,
correspondents rarely felt the need to expand their meaning with
pictorial images. For that matter, why hieroglyphics? Why does
this cutting-edge technology cause people to reach back to the
methods of the ancient Egyptians?
"You're just full of creative ideas today," your boss messages
you.
What did she mean by that????
Praise or sarcasm?
Computer mail is really more like talk than mail. Its major
attraction is the way messages can cheaply zip around the glove and
be responded to almost instantaneously. Because these
conversations are in unadorned type, however, there's no facial
expression from which to pick up nuance.
"With E-mail you have the speed of the telephone, but without
any of the clues. On the Internet, you're corresponding with total
strangers and it's like conversation, but you can't see anybody's
facial expressions or hear intonation that would convey attitude
about what you're saying," noted Catherine Ball, professor of
computational linguistics at Georgetown University.
Enter emoticons. In most networks, you can't add italics or
boldface, or increase the typeface or size of messages. Most users
do not have literary skills on the level of 19th-century epistolary
novelists. But offending people is still a no-no. So "How should
I know?" is more softly communicated by writing "How should I know
:-)"
"The dynamics of using E-mail is that you can respond
instantaneously, possibly without thinking through what you're
going to say," noted David Sanderson, the University of Wisconsin
programmer who is the author of "Smileys," one of the two emoticon
dictionaries. "But people at the other end don't know how
seriously you intend your message." So, for example, if one were
writing a formal letter on a typewriter and on review discovered
more gibberish in it than usual, the result might be a laborious
rewrite. In the far more informal and speedy world of E-mail, by
contract, a message that basically managed to communicate, no
matter how imperfectly, might have appended to it the explanation
#-) for "partied all night," and be zapped off anyway.
Also nice is that emoticons frequently can be understood by
people who do not speak the same language. In this way, they are
more inclusive than the shorthand found on computer networks such
as BTW ("by the way"), IMHO ("In my humble opinion"), ROFL
("rolling on the floor laughing") and RTFM ("read the [expletive]
manual").
What's more, clever people are having fun figuring out how
many images can be assembled using only 36 letters and numbers and
a handful of punctuation signs. Thus emoticons have evolved into
a kind of graffiti, with 8(:-) meaning "Mickey Mouse," 8(:-)8
meaning "Annette Funicello" and Hank Aaron being :-)-!< as Seth
Godwin points out in "The Smiley Dictionary," the other paperback
emoticon compilation.
Because emoticons serve as a buffer between humans and the
harsh machine environment of the computer, they are just the
beginning of a whole industry, said Yoav Shoham, a Stanford
professor and programming pioneer. "Imparting the characteristic
of humor is a challenge not easily met, he said.
That's why there is still plenty of room for growth.
One recent exchange explains why. At an extremely
inauspicious point in a serious network mixed-gender discussion,
one participant inadvertently typed "pubic" when he meant "public."
There was a ghastly pause.
Then somebody typed: "Stand by while Stewart tries to come up
with an emoticon for 'blush.'"
Graffiti
=:O] Clinton
:(=) Carter
+O<:-) The Pope
7:^] Reagan
:'} Nixon
@:-{} Tammy Faye Bakker
->=:-)X Zippy the Pinhead
=|:-) Lincoln
Psychological States
%-) After staring at a screen for 15 hours straight
':-( Very Hot
%*} Very Drunk
%+{ Lost a fight
:-( Sad
:-C Real unhappy
:~-( Bawling
;-) Winking
SOURCES: "Smileys," by David Sanderson, and "The Smiley Dictionary," by Seth Godwin.