What are you smiling at?

Today is the 23rd anniversary of that most pervasive and irritating internet communication protocol of the emoticon or in its popular parlance, the smiley. Favoured form of communication amongst teenage girls and Johnny come lately internet users that some describe as the only way to convey emotion in written electronic communication but has come to resemble the hideous vacuous-ness of the “have a nice day” school of insincere communication. Slightly amusing in 1998 I would be quite happy to see the demise of this juvenile habit. Eugh!

Yes, it’s been two and a bit decades since one Scott E Fahlman, a Pittsburgh computer scientist, had his Archimedes moment and realised that the most natural and common of human expressions could be rendered in otherwise grumpy everyday punctuation. On the 19th September 1982 Fahlman typed a colon, a dash and a bracket, explained ‘read it sideways’, and the smiley was born.

Alternatively you could always express yourself eloquently through a masterful use of language…