I wish that the rule against personal insults in GD would be enforced with a little more consistency. It’s a good rule.
Often the Pit is a friendlier place.
The best one is the “middle finger” -_- ;
Maybe it would be if more people used the ‘report this post’ function. Even the Mods must have trouble spotting phrases like “cretinous loon” in the midst of some of those 2000 word posts.
I liked him at first, but he soon became so inflammatory that I got really annoyed with him. And that eye thingy drove me crazy.
I always find the intelligent posters who get needlessly belligerent much worse than the slack-jawed idiots who can be ignored. Oh well. Glad it’s over. He had enough chances to change and he obviously was bright enough to understand why people were mad at him and he wouldn’t stop. Buh bye.
Are you whooshing me? I thought that was confusion (“I am sweating or having a giant drop of something fly out of my ear”).
It has everything to do with 1337-speak. It may not have at one point but it’s been thouroughly absorbed by the ub3r’s.
Can you date the origins? I’ve been seeing 
in non-Japanese, non-manga, non-anime, non-video game, etc etc etc context since at least 1997.
I’ve always heard of it as the middle finger smiley. -_- ; you, man.
Looks like I was responsible for provoking Zagadka to one of her outbursts. Sorry.
Btw, I always thought Z was a she. “Zagadka” in Russian means “Riddle” and is feminine.
No, that’s completely wrong.
IME, people who use 1337-speak frequently use western-style smileys pretty much exclusively (and a pretty significant number rarely use emoticon at all), unless they’re also anime/manga/console geeks - who never seem to use them mixed with the 1337-speak.
Even if they use J-style more and my sample is skewed, your comment is totally inaccurate, because a) they’re primarily used by anime/manga fans, console gamers, furries (a later adoption, due to the inherant cuteness to the J-style emoticons), and Asian (not just Japanese) net-users who may or may not belong to any of those groups. b) They didn’t start it.
This article (from 1996) places the origin in the mid-to-late 1980s. (For some reason most of the characters don’t actually show.)
I’ve been using J-style smileys since I went online in 1997, and have never encountered them from anyone who wasn’t Asian, an anime/manga fan, a furre, or a console gamer.
(Also searching for 1337 and emoticons/smileys together leads to the ‘nosed’ western-style (:^)/8-o/etc), not to J-style emoticons - which come up looking for Japanese/anime emoticons/smileys, so my experience seems to be borne out.)
As to the meaning of --;, ; is used for anime-style sweatdrops, or tears. -- can be slow-burning anger, or embarrassment, or even sleeping. -_-; would likely mean ‘Oh, dear, I’ve just done something really dumb, haven’t I?’, although depending on context it could be other things. Like ‘god, you’re so dumb’. If I was to guess what flipping the bird would be, it’d most likely be one involving Japanese characters (Yama would work well).
I’m not disputing the rest of your post but I occasionally use o_O and am not any of those things.
Alrighty, now I have.
Also off-topic: I knew folks on MUDs (time for me to get out my walking frame and join the blue-rinse set) who were big on cute ‘picture’ emoticons.
=^…^=
A cute cat, facing straight on. I actually like this one, and do think it’s cute. (Don’t hurt me, people!)
**@–>-- **
A rose. You really have to try hard to see that, I reckon (I’ve colourised it to help.)
There were a few more, but those are the ones that stuck in my mind. I’ve seen the o_O type emoticons done to death in EQ, CoH and now EQ2 though, and while at first they bothered me not at all they now inspire me to want to reach through the monitor and smack someone around. o_O in particular drives me nuts, as do the ‘putz’ and ‘/rolleyes’ on this forum - unless they’re applied ironically to posts about oneself.
[MAJOR OFF-TOPIC]
There was very nearly an extremely lame pitting regarding my encounter with a pick-up group in EQ2 last week in which I declined to join them because one of their members had been /shouting across the zone - a lot - the riveting news that he was very drunk. When asked why I’d not join them I replied that I make a point of not playing with people who are intoxicated, but that I wished them well in their endeavors.
Response: uh, ok… i guess. o_O…
Result: Daria says nothing in return but inwardly begins meltdown: You *guess * it’s *okay * for me not to play with your drunken idiot friend who spams the zone? You **guess ** it’s **okay ** for me to adhere to my own code of conduct? You **guess ** it’s **okay ** to use that frigging idiotic boggled smilie at me and not immediately fall over and die of your own stupidity?
Y’all were saved when I realized that really, a rant’s not much worth posting if 99% of the reader base won’t a) know what you’re talking about and b) probably think you’re way overreacting anyway. 
[/MO-T]
- Daria.
I wonder if banned posters listen to us from beyond the grave.
Do you guys think Zagadka is reading this?
Absolutely!
FWIW my gaming friends and I all use 1337 a lot * and we mix the western smileys (:D) and japanese smilies (>_<) like crazy. We also don’t really fall into a specific category like you state. Some of us like anime, others do not. Some of us are prolly furries, others aren’t. Though I like some console games, a large portion of the group doesn’t think much of them.
We’re from all over the world: US, England, Canada, Japan, Finland, Australia, and Italy with more scattered around in other countries as well.
The only thing we really have in common is the fairly diverse selection of games we enjoy.
*Jokingly. Actually in my entire gaming/internet lifetime I’ve rarely met anyone who used it and wasn’t just kidding around or being sarcastic/a tease.
Same here. It actually kind of annoys me when people flame 1337-speak because, no one over the age of 15 uses it seriously, and who’s talking to 14 year olds on the internet?
There is, of course, the extremely rare exception. I don’t believe Zagadka was joking. I got the impression that he knew he was a poor arguer and threw that in there to make it look like he wasn’t taking the argument seriously. That way he’d feel better when someone inevitably pointed out what a tool he sounded like.
I think Zagadka was just a kid. Good luck, man.
IS. Is just a kid. gawdhelpme.
No, I heard that when they ban you from the SDMB, Ed Zotti personally hunts you down and kills you.
So y’all behave!
Of course not, don’t spread silly rumors, Sam.
[sub]Lynn is Cecil’s executioner, dontchaknow.[/sub]