I have been noticing an ever increasing problem. There is an insidious, yet subtle disease that is slowly taking over our society. It started on the internet but it is starting to spread to the “outside world”. On the surface it seems to be harmless, perhaps even amusing but that’s just a clever disguise. What it’s doing is slowly eroding our intelligence and making us increasingly lazy and worse unimaginative. I am speaking of course of the emoticon.
You’ve all seen them, and there are extremely few, if any, of us left who do not use them every day. I dug deep and spent a lot of time and energy trying to discover where these things came from. I Googled the subject and I learned the following from the first page that I read.
The very first emoticon was used by a guy called Kevin MacKenzie in 1979. -) was supposed to mean, “tongue in cheek”. Fortunately, it did not catch on at that time. Unfortunately, between 1981 and mid-1982 they reappeared and just increased in popularity every year since.
There was a CMU bulletin board system where many people could chat and have discussions. Apparently, some people on this board didn’t understand subtle humour which led to countless flames and meaningless discussions. So a number of these people started to wonder if they could use some combination of punctuation marks to signify what was and wasn’t a joke. If you want to see how it evolved you can read about it here. Long story short though, a guy by the name of Scott Fahlman came up with 
to show that something was funny and 
to show that something wasn’t. And now today we thousands of different variations of these EMOTional ICONS to signify any imaginable state of mind that you could possibly be experiencing.
Now, I’m not certain exactly how “LOL” and all of it’s endless variations came into being, but I can only surmise that there are people out there who are unable to read the traditional emoticon so they had to invent something more obvious.
Alas, I don’t think that this is a problem that will go away any time soon. Therefore, I will have to apply the old adage, “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.” During my research I came across this: ROTFC, PGH. It means, Rolling On The Floor Choking, Please Get Help. I think I am going to try to use that as often as I can. Also I have invented this :-0->B It means that I am opening my mouth and reaching out for a Blue Beaver Beer. So, when you’re feeling blue :-0->B
(originally posted March 2007)
They are rather like germs; they spread rapidly.
:-0->B…cheers
I agree that it is replacing a lot of text that could convey the emotion, but it’s super popular with the younger generation. Having emoticons is just an easy way for people to express what cannot be summed up… you can never tell if someone is being sarcastic, but you can with certain emoticons.
I guess that is where text messages also came from. I can see emotions because some people just do not get some things. I am sure someone took something wrong and the war of words went on and on.
I guess i am simple and just say what you mean so i do not have to think or figure it out i have to deal with people i can not figure everyday so no need to make more problems for me.
I found this while looking around for info about the history of emoticons! I think it’s pretty funny that you were so mad about them 2 years ago…you must be COMPLETELY crazy now!
I dont think so. Emoticons is for better expression. I like the emoticons,and want the to be more and for every occasions