# I propose new / replacement non animated smilies **URL:** \ **Category:** About This Message Board\ **Created:** [April 19, 2006, 11:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-propose-new-replacement-non-animated-smilies/353381 "2006-04-19T23:00:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Diceman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Diceman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diceman)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2006, 2:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-propose-new-replacement-non-animated-smilies/353381/41 "2006-04-24T02:18:36Z")
We definitely need a nauseated/puking smile. I vote for **Jayn\_Newell** ’s version. Also, :o and :smack: are redundant. Drop the oral gratification smile, because the head smack one expresses the sentiment much more clearly. I say keep Wally. The finger-flipping smile might be too rude. Lastly, get rid of ;j . It has a small number of devotees, but it really isn’t very useful. We could replace it with a devil smile. (Those can be useful on occasion, when you want to admit that a comment or suggestion leaves something to be desired ethically.) ---
**Author:** ![JustAnotherGeek](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/58f4c7/32.png) [@JustAnotherGeek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JustAnotherGeek)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2006, 2:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-propose-new-replacement-non-animated-smilies/353381/42 "2006-04-24T02:37:05Z")
[QUOTE=tomndebb] “Why do you HAVE that smiley if we can’t USE that smiley?” [/QUOTE] My take on Wally: Why do we HAVE that smilie if no one UNDERSTANDS what it means? I didn’t really want to open up debate on too many established smilies, but I have never really understood the meaning/point of that one (or the Happy Orthodox Jewish smilie, but that’s another debate). To me, the point of a smilie is that they should clearly convey a message quicker (and maybe more twee) than words alone can. I mean, I _could_ write, “just kidding,” or, I could hit the ole 😉 button, and you know what I mean. But the Wally? I guess that it’s an insult because its use is limited to the Pit, but I would not have assumed that based on looks alone. The wink makes it hard to understand. As an insult, it would make more sense to have the actual smilie part be the mad guy, instead of the winking guy. Then, it would be very clear that it is not a friendly jibe. (Of course, I cannot imagine being in a frame of mind where I actually wanted to call someone names but would result to using a twee little smilie. But that’s yet another debate.) Was there a point to this rant? I guess only that I think the Wally fails as a smilie - it does not send a clear message of its own. ---
**Author:** ![IvoryTowerDenizen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ivorytowerdenizen/32/17937_2.png) [@IvoryTowerDenizen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/IvoryTowerDenizen)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2006, 2:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-propose-new-replacement-non-animated-smilies/353381/43 "2006-04-24T02:48:35Z")
[QUOTE=fetus] I use Happy Orthodox Jewish Man all the time. ;j [/QUOTE] Ditto. ;j Feels nice to mainstream, _somewhere…_ Don’t really care for the ones posted, but I am not a big one for change… ---
**Author:** ![Hostile\_Dialect](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e495f1/32.png) [@Hostile\_Dialect](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hostile_Dialect)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2006, 2:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-propose-new-replacement-non-animated-smilies/353381/44 "2006-04-24T02:48:48Z")
> [@Loopydude](#): > > I don’t really get Wally anyway. What’s he on about? He says I’m a putz, but he smiles and winks. Well, am I a putz or not? I can’t tell. I think he’s being less than sincere. And anyone that coy shouldn’t be allowed to take up so much space. Enough of this frivolity; say what you mean, or say nothing. It’s humorous and tongue-in-cheek, in the same way that you would lovingly say “Dumbass!” to a best friend/roommate/SO after they drop something. ;j ---
**Author:** ![Frank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Frank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frank)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2006, 4:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-propose-new-replacement-non-animated-smilies/353381/45 "2006-04-24T04:21:36Z")
[QUOTE=Squink] The limited number of smileys might not be an issue once the board software is updated. [BAUT](http://www.bautforum.com/forumdisplay.php?f=44) uses vBulletin Version 3.5.4, and has 35 distinct smileys available. [/QUOTE] After the last upgrade, the almost universal consensus of the board was that even the blowjob smiley was better than those. ---
**Author:** ![Loopydude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e56c9b/32.png) [@Loopydude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loopydude)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2006, 4:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-propose-new-replacement-non-animated-smilies/353381/46 "2006-04-24T04:26:32Z")
I still say the new “confused” was great. ---
**Author:** ![Frank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Frank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frank)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2006, 5:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-propose-new-replacement-non-animated-smilies/353381/47 "2006-04-24T05:01:38Z")
[QUOTE=Loopydude] I still say the new “confused” was great. [/QUOTE] Well, maybe that one. A [direct link](http://www.bautforum.com/misc.php?do=showsmilies) to the smilies used at Bad Astronomy. (He’s going to kill me now.) ---
**Author:** ![Loopydude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e56c9b/32.png) [@Loopydude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loopydude)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2006, 5:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-propose-new-replacement-non-animated-smilies/353381/48 "2006-04-24T05:15:55Z")
Wow. I forgot just how very hard the rest of them sucked. Yeesh, I’ll stick with the little orange fellator, I guess. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2006, 6:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-propose-new-replacement-non-animated-smilies/353381/49 "2006-04-24T06:34:28Z")
[Chronos’s ‘homicidally enraged geek’ smilie.](http://cassandra.physics.montana.edu/enraged.gif) [From this thread.](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=367996) Yes, I am the geek in question. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Jayn\_Newell](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Jayn\_Newell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jayn_Newell)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2006, 12:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-propose-new-replacement-non-animated-smilies/353381/50 "2006-04-24T12:18:08Z")
[QUOTE=jjimm] Though I did ‘barfy’ a long time ago, and I’m fond of him, I must say that **Jayn\_Newell** ’s version is way better. Much more panicked-looking and about to burst. Should it come down to it, I would withdraw mine. [/QUOTE] _blush_ ---
**Author:** ![AncientHumanoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ancienthumanoid/32/278_2.png) [@AncientHumanoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AncientHumanoid)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2006, 1:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-propose-new-replacement-non-animated-smilies/353381/51 "2006-04-24T13:38:46Z")
[QUOTE=tomndebb] Just my personal (not official) opinion, but eliminating the Wally/putz only to bring in the finger wave seems counter-productive. We are going to see lots of newbies (and amnesiac old farts) “waving” at other posters in threads outside the **Pit** and getting told to stop insulting people, following which we are going to see a lot of complaints along the lines of “Why do you HAVE that smiley if we can’t USE that smiley?” Given a limited number of smileys, it is just one thing to consider. [/QUOTE] Vote on all of them. Wally, JewBoy, BlowJob, QuestionmarkHead, TrekBoy, etc… Give us update options and include a delete option. ---
**Author:** ![JustAnotherGeek](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/58f4c7/32.png) [@JustAnotherGeek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JustAnotherGeek)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2006, 1:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-propose-new-replacement-non-animated-smilies/353381/52 "2006-04-24T13:52:04Z")
[QUOTE=NoClueBoy] Vote on all of them. Wally, JewBoy, BlowJob, QuestionmarkHead, TrekBoy, etc… Give us update options and **include a delete option.** [/QUOTE] (bolding mine) re: deleting. How would that affect the existing messages? I imagine that it would make them harder to read in that where the messages might have once been coherent (hey, I’m trying to be generous), the loss of the smilies might make them lose meaning. I don’t think that we should delete any smilie. Maybe move one out of the smilie box to discourage use, but that’s it. ---
**Author:** ![AncientHumanoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ancienthumanoid/32/278_2.png) [@AncientHumanoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AncientHumanoid)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2006, 2:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-propose-new-replacement-non-animated-smilies/353381/53 "2006-04-24T14:04:54Z")
Disable, then. I am not a smilie option expert. 😛 ---
**Author:** ![BiblioCat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ed8c4c/32.png) [@BiblioCat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BiblioCat)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2006, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-propose-new-replacement-non-animated-smilies/353381/54 "2006-04-24T17:45:21Z")
Just my opinion: NO ANIMATED SMILIES! Rename the Wally smilie. Or get rid of it altogether. I don’t think it’s really necessary. Go back to the Blue Embarrassed Smilie we had a while ago. It had a better face. The orange one we have now just looks sleepy. We do need a Barfy Smilie - I like **Jayn Newell’s** from the first page. I wouldn’t like one with actual barf in it. Limit the number of smilies that can be used in each post. Maybe two or three? I like the smilies, but not when people use 10 in each post. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2006, 4:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-propose-new-replacement-non-animated-smilies/353381/55 "2006-04-25T04:16:24Z")
There is a technical reason we should avoid animated smilies: At least some of us use [Privoxy](http://www.privoxy.org/) to avoid ads, and have it configured to disable GIF animations. If smilies were animated, those of us using this would not know it. If the animation were essential to understanding the smilie, we would not get it. All this is in addition to the fact that animation is a bad idea for many other reasons. It’s just another nail in the coffin. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2006, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-propose-new-replacement-non-animated-smilies/353381/56 "2006-04-25T17:20:58Z")
> [@](#): > > Chronos’s ‘homicidally enraged geek’ smilie. > > From this thread. > > Yes, I am the geek in question. Wow, if I’d have known that people were going to take that seriously, I would have gone to the trouble to figure out how to make the background transparent, and to optimize the color tables, and the like. I’m not sure it’d exactly fit in, except as an in-joke, but if folks really want it, sure, I’ll put it on the table. And I think that “because they’re annoying” is a quite sufficient reason not to use animated smilies. Were it strictly a technical matter, I wouldn’t be quite so opposed. ---
**Author:** ![mrrealtime](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e8c25b/32.png) [@mrrealtime](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mrrealtime)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2006, 12:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-propose-new-replacement-non-animated-smilies/353381/57 "2006-04-26T12:50:25Z")
Smilies are just another tool of communication, animated or otherwise. If you find them annoying, you are probably someone who takes yourself way too seriously. Like I do. I personally find “IMHO”, “LOL”, and all those other juvenile abbreviations annoying, as well as all graphical smilies. Smilies were invented as a semi-clever use of the keyboard’s limited graphical capability. Transfering that to small yellow balls with faces completely destroys the ingenuity of the original intent. Its incredibly annoying to find 🙂 get automatically turned into a yellow ball because they imply different context. That said, there’s poor communication and effective communication, using any language, pictograph, animation, small film clip, color. The more smillies the board has, the more options we have in terms of communicating with each other, with the opportunity for increased precision. If the board is truly interested in fighting ignorance, then any opportunity to increase communcative accuracy by use of a wider lexicon is a good thing. ---
**Author:** ![mrrealtime](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e8c25b/32.png) [@mrrealtime](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mrrealtime)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2006, 12:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-propose-new-replacement-non-animated-smilies/353381/58 "2006-04-26T12:51:52Z")
[QUOTE=Chronos] And I think that “because they’re annoying” is a quite sufficient reason not to use animated smilies. [/QUOTE] a surprisingly ignorant statement from a generally intelligent person. Odd. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2006, 2:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-propose-new-replacement-non-animated-smilies/353381/59 "2006-04-26T14:58:18Z")
[QUOTE=What Exit?] I dug this relic of the past up for a 2002 Poll. Found it by accident on a Google search for something else. SDMB Smiley Poll 1- May/June 2002 [http://home.earthlink.net/~awinkelried/smpoll/poll1.html](http://home.earthlink.net/~awinkelried/smpoll/poll1.html) [/QUOTE] Cool! I dug up the original post on SDMB that contained those submissions, but the various image-hosting sites people used were either gone or no longer had the smilies up. One reason I was looking for this was that I remembered a pretty good pukey smilie (see #42 in the section “Submissions between 10 May and 24 May 2002 / aka Beware of geeks bearing .gifs”), and if we’re going to go with a pukey smilie (seems popular idea), it should be one that is instantaneously self-explanatory. No offense to the artists, but some of the current submissions look like someone puffing up in temper before screaming, and/or aren’t easy to make out at all. I also liked the gobsmacked smilie. ---
**Author:** ![BMalion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e274bd/32.png) [@BMalion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BMalion)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2006, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-propose-new-replacement-non-animated-smilies/353381/60 "2006-04-27T16:24:49Z")
[QUOTE=fetus] When frozen, fingerwave kind of looks like a middle finger. Lightbulb, whistle, says here, worship, and maybe popcorn look cool and useful. The other ones I don’t really see myself using. [/QUOTE] Please please please, NO PUKING SMILEY. Thank you. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-propose-new-replacement-non-animated-smilies/353381.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-propose-new-replacement-non-animated-smilies/353381.md?page=4)