I hate smileys. Not because they're ridiculous, goofy or childish, but because they promote and support the idea and the behavior of not thinking while reading.
My experience is that people have come to depend on smileys as a sign of what the writer is expressing. Especially in forums on the web, the participants seem to rely heavily on smileys to give them a hint as to wether a post is serious or not, wether the author is trying to be funny, or ironic, or not, etc. Even when the irony or the joke is so obvious that it's barely even funny, someone always misses the point unless there's a smiley stating the obvious.
So please, join me in stopping this madness. Text is supposed to describe itself, it shouldn't need a fucking icon to explain the mood with which it was written. Besides, studies confirm that smileys cause cancer. ;-)
Comments
I don't think that the idea that "text is supposed to describe itself" remains plausible anymore. I teach Literature at a university. I have a strong attachment to various forms of text, but my dealings with students suggest that text is an entity which just can't be policed. Sure, I can knock a few points off here and there for grammar, but ultimately the distinction between "it's" and "its" won't matter anymore. It's an evolution that's out of anyone's control.
Smileys are punctuation for a generation who needs such cues in a medium which values efficiency over presentation. Us "old timers" have capital letters, italics, underlines, and in some cases, grammar.
Perhaps your post was meant as a tongue-in-cheek statement. If so, I didn't get it. A smiley might have helped. (must...resist...urge...to put... smiley... here...)
Comment by resonance at 19:45, 19 Feb, 2004 #
I'm being serious. I think the use of smileys is detrimental to creative writing; with them you don't have to be able to express yourself to convey seriousness or irony or whatever, you just put a smiley there, and voilá, how you write don't matter anymore.
Comment by Tomas at 21:29, 19 Feb, 2004 #
I'll have to respectfully disagree (noting, however, that I'm not a big fan of smileys).
How is using smileys any different than using colloquial expressions in one's writing? Aren't smileys simply a colloquial use of punctuation?
Language is a fluid, evolving thing. I'm not saying that everyone has to like or participate in the changes that come about, but to say that such changes somehow detrimental to writing is as absurd as saying that rock n' roll or hip hop are detrimental to music.
I'll freak out when I see a smiley in an academic paper I'm grading, but for the most part I find the constant and inevitable re-tooling of words and symbols in language and in writing fascinating.
Comment by resonance at 22:27, 19 Feb, 2004 #
Just wait till pictograms arrive.
Heck, in Fidonet we even had a special quoting style to denote irony.
Comment by Johan Svensson at 13:11, 20 Feb, 2004 #
I couldn't agree more. I think the reason it's so common is because it's that much more visual and instant than actually having to read the sentence properly and draw a conclusion about the mood of it that way. It's quicker to write, and quicker to read, which suits our "get it now" culture down to the ground. Although strangely I don't mind smileys when they are text based, as opposed to being converted to a stupid goofy yellow face by forum or IM systems. But having said that, smileys are nothing to the Text Message/shortened words speak that gets everywhere at the moment. It takes less time to write, but triple the time to decipher. Although naturally, it's rarely worth it.
L8r :o;
Comment by Tony | TwoEyes at 20:05, 20 Feb, 2004 #
I'm a big fan of diction. I like to think I'm capable of using words that communicate the tone of what I'm saying, and I also like to think that the person to whom I'm writing will read it correctly. But I also have to take into consideration that people bring considerable personal issues/moods to bear when they read even the most innocuous things. Therefore, I generally don't use smileys unless it seems necessary for a particular message or recipient.
I have found, however, that " ; ) " smileys make awesome jack o'lanterns.
Comment by Cheshire at 03:54, 24 Feb, 2004 #
Smileys irritate me, and I fully agree that they dumb down your language; some people get so addicted to them I'm convinced they think in terms of smileys. But they are also tools of the lazy (that would be me), and sometimes you just want to keep a conversation (especially one conducted with the people mentioned above) as concise as possible without seeming rude. Thus my smileys are reserved for people who deserve them.
Comment by Aileen at 05:07, 24 Feb, 2004 #
The discussion has been closed on this entry. Thanks to everybody who participated.