See? I can’t tell what that means! Is it, “Shut the fuck up, the grownups are talking”? Or is it, “Heh. I’m never going to be able to look at the Rolleyes smiley again without it imagining upskirt smirking.”? Or is it, “I like looking up skirts!”?
That Mr. Cool is too ambiguous!
(OK, maybe that’s one more I’d change if I could.)
I agree with this. The old smilies fit very well with the stark, down-to-basics look and feel of this site. It’s one of the reasons I like it here. No silly avatars, no thousands of smilies to choose from… We had a handful of smilies, and except for the embarrassed guy, (blow job smilie), all worked very well.
Especially the rolling eye smilie. This new one is terrible. Add me to the list of we want the old sarcastic eye smilie back!
Your link was missing rolleyes, but I got him from this thread, so we’re good.
The only problem I have now is that the new emoticons are 16 pixels wide, while the old ones were only 15. It wouldn’t matter, except, for some reason 
in the editor is explicitly set to be 16x16 (although none of the rest are).
Also, was winkie yellow? The one I have is, but it looks wrong to me. I almost saved a yellow biggrin, so I know the colors aren’t necessarily correct.
It’s an emoticon, for heaven’s sake. There are members who found the old one not just “a little harsh” but “infuriating”! But as I responded to them, their problem is not the emoticon.
Me too.
Wow, I never knew emoticons could raise such passion.
I’ve never noticed most of the details mentioned here. A smiley face is a smiley face. I’ve never paid much attention to the shade of color or whether the eyes were twinkling.
So the new smileys are racist, too?
For fun, I went ahead and made “new” versions of the stragglers, along with one of the original rolleyes. Dubious isn’t quite as good as I’d like, but the other two came out pretty good.
Note that they look kinda messed up unless you put them on a white (well, #f8f8f8 for you purists) background. That’s because vBulletin uses GIFs for some reason.
[ul]
[li]smack[/li][li]dubious[/li][li]rolleyes[/li][/ul]
They are an aspect of communication, which I find of interest.
Well you shouldn’t. I’m not a sommelier, so I don’t know why a particular wine tastes nice, nor can I describe its flavor. And some say that writing about music is like dancing to architecture. But surely the new rolleyes has a different feel than the old one, and after messing around with ~16x16 gifs for a couple of hours (including my stint oh about a decade ago) I can speculate why. The point being is that the icon can have an effect even on those not conversant with graphic artistry (like, for example, myself).
More generally, yes, yes pastel is a little insipid. And the fuzziness isn’t much to look at. But I think the new set mostly serves their function well. I hope to give rolly a makeover at some point, if only for my own curiosity.
Dubious is used as a softener - it’s actually a softer version of the old rolleyes when you think about it. (Though it wasn’t intended that way when it was designed.) People throw in a smilie because, as I said earlier, unadorned sarcasm is harsh.
That said, Oldy Rolly was also used a single icon putdown. And sometimes it was used as an intensifier on non-sarcastic language as well. It’s a little different from the other icons. 'Ol dubious is just more polite somehow, sort of like Mr. Spock. Fun fact: Mr. Dubious’s eyebrow is raised so high that it distorts the top of his skull a little. That’s how dubious he is!
Pirate Dubious!
Well, he used to be disgusted, but now he tries to be amused.
I think this is really the only logical solution. Clearly the members of this board can not handle a change of smileys with the sites current design. So if the entire site is redesigned, maybe with images and avatars enabled and a whole new color pallette to fit with the new smileys, then maybe said members will acquiesce.
Here’s what I use on my site, FWIW. It’s not all the smilies, but just an example of some SDMB equivalents. You probably won’t like them.
Smile: http://i.imgur.com/hFnweNU.png
Eek: http://i.imgur.com/H4yTQzJ.gif
Freaked (eek variant): http://i.imgur.com/Q9Tmy8r.png
Mad: http://i.imgur.com/VuVel28.png
Rolleyes: http://i.imgur.com/1uQdUty.png
Cool: http://i.imgur.com/RJ7JiTs.png
Tongue: http://i.imgur.com/NvzVHyo.gif
Wink: http://i.imgur.com/E2lt0pp.png
Grin: http://i.imgur.com/HZkGrQT.png
Embarassed: http://i.imgur.com/CuYqDre.gif
Dubious: http://i.imgur.com/CA1OaR5.png
Frown: http://i.imgur.com/MptBJdP.png
I don’t have a “smack”, but there’s a couple of close equivalents, meant more for frustration than “d’oh!”
Wall: http://i.imgur.com/Wz6J3xw.png
Facepalm: http://i.imgur.com/KuFzF2X.png
EDIT: This is all of them - http://i.imgur.com/8CiAp7s.png . Some are inside jokes,
Who is chet?
And the Picard facepalm kinda looks like a penis.
So does Picard for that matter.
True, true.
It’s the smiley-sized version of an avatar used by a forum member that died a few years ago. The smiley is a memorial, of sorts.
Awww, that’s nice of you guys.
Ha! I’ve always thought he looked a little like a pirate, but my edit sure made it worse! That’s what I get for making the eyes blurrier to better match the others. That eyebrow blends with the half closed eye to make a patch.
I tried again, this time making sure to keep the eyebrow and right eye distinctly separate, cheating a bit of the blurriness. I actually like my new one enough that I tried to make it match the brighter color scheme, like I did with rolleyes.
A good emoticon, but can we use them on the STMB?
I hate the new emoticons. :mad: