Wow, that takes me back. Yeah, Wally was OK, but the whole thing was weird after he “died” or whatever.
Anyone know what happened in real life with him?
You quacking win the thread. 
So why do people sometimes write :wally: under their posts, again?
:wally: was a smiley. While this particular smiley was removed from the list, the code remains.
The Wally smiley had “putz” above a wink, IIRC.
Was the smiley meant as an insult or a tribute? It sounds like it was a putz smiley, something I would generally consider a bad thing to be named after me.
He was fond of calling people ‘Putz’, back in the day when we were allowed to do such things.
My interpretation of it was sort of a gentle FU, without the acrimony.
I was going to ask about it. When did we lose that?
“Wally” has been Brit slang for an idiot since at least the 1980s, though it’s had its day now.
Couple of years ago, anyway – we lost the Orthodox Jewish smiley at the same time.
The code for which was :happyyid::eek:
Wow. This Wally stuff is well before my time, but I’m intrigued!
Say, does anyone have a link to the original funny phone line story, by the original author?
I find it intriguing that that Wally and the phone sex thingie, was pretty much the reason that I decided to join up here lo those several years ago.
Imagine my chagrin when the truth was uncovered. I considered committing ritual internet seppaku to save face but then I remembered that I didn’t really give a shit about saving face. Several hundred Hamburger Helper references later and now this place is even getting some of my money!
Christ, I’m a sucker.
Here it is, unattributed, but unedited (probably technically NSFW)…
http://forums.winamp.com/showthread.php?postid=1350614
…and here’s the original author complaining about the mis-appropriation.
Thanks. It was smirk-worthy, but not quite the knee slapper I was anticipating.
It’s was so 2001. You had to be there.
I’ve always hoped someone would write a clever story about the Wally “incident”, from start to finish. Properly told, it would be entertaining to read and fill in the gaps of SDMB’s history. But it seems like management doesn’t like to talk about it. Bygones?
I believe it was :j
or something like that.
I’m not seeing anyone coming in here and trying to stop this discussion, are you?
Yeah. That’s right. The file name was happyyid.gif.