I just read a work-related email that was absolutely saturated with smiley faces and doubled, even tripled, exclamation points. At 8:46am the horrid sickliness of it all was too much for me to bear, and I very nearly was a little bit sick into my mouth.;0<<<<<<<<<<
I will admit that I use the smiley face from time to time, (usually out of fear that someone will be offended by something that I mean as a joke) but honestly, the smiley and all his wicked cronies (winking face, tongue sticking out face etc), and also the! pointless! exclamation!! marks!!! are just so chronically over-used that it is ridiculous. And don't even get me started on 'LOL'.
Come on, people, there needs to be some boundaries. As they say in the classics, discretion is the key to non-annoyingness. Well, you know what?
As of this day, I am going to begin a 30 day vow of abstinence from all manner of typed faces. Sort of like a bloggers' detox. Anyone with me? You won't regret it. You even have my blessing to use the comments page of this post as a last binge. I'll go first. Look away.
:(:P;0:.<";))>:"?<><>?;():)P:p :(:P;0:.<";))>:"?<><>?;():):P
Urrr, I feel dirty.
11 comments:
Won't be joining you, I'm afraid.
I find the humble emoticon far too useful to just throw away.
That being said, I usually restrict my smileying to one of four standards:
:) - happy (duh!)
;) - my tongue is in my cheek as I write this.
:( - sad (duh!)
:S - Well, that just sucks, doesn't it?
The thing that bugs me most is when people use emoticons in parentheses, and use the emoticon as a closing brace... um, no!
Invalid: (yep ;)
Correct: (yep ;))
Okay my pet peeve. People who use capitals when commenting, emailing, messaging, whatever. It always FEELS LIKE THEY'RE YELLING AT ME. YOU DON'T HAVE TO SHOUT. WE CAN HEAR/SEE YOU.
I hate emoticons. It's documented. Here. Here. And here. I also hate LOLs, write out my SMS in full and can't stand people who use "u" instead of "you"...
I'm with Soph on the capitals thing.
I hesitate to write too much about online etiquette because I feel like everybody should be aware of it.
If I could figure out how to automatically turn off capitalised words in the comments of my blog I would. Then the world would be a better place.
oh well, rodeo. we had to part ways at some point.
I do take issue with your ;) tongue in cheek one. This is as painful to me as people who say 'just kidding' after they tell a joke.
Yeah, I got that it was a joke.
yeah soph, hate the yelling. I also hate when I do it unintentionally myself. Curse you, caps lock.
good on you Nathan. Fight the system bro.
I don't say 'just kidding' after a joke, because you have a non-verbal context to evaluate my comment with.
However, in a purely text-based medium, some people (often American) can't recognise very dry (or sarcastic) humour, of which I am a fan, and the message is not communicated effectively, occasionally causing offense, and possibly even causing some to think that I am not (gasp!) funny...
not funny?? Tradgedy of tradgedy's!
I am all for taking that risk. For me a joke dies as soon as a wink or 'just kidding' rears its' fowl ugly head. And each time, deep inside, a little piece of me dies.
If you don't give your joke the best start in life, what chance does it have? Who else will be there for it if not you?
A very wise magician once said, be kind to your jokes, and do not smother them.
And in person, I don't smother them - occasionally someone will realise I told a joke several minutes later.
But when being sarcastic online, and it could be misconstrued (and hurt someone), I'll drop the smiley in.
so you put other people before your jokes? What a crazy mixed up world.
It's sick, I know.
It's a personal struggle, pray for me.
;)
I sure will, Weaker Brother.
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