There are smilies puking. Shooting machine guns, running, dancing.
The smilies here fuckin’ suck.
I can’t fully express my anger sometimes without writing a word and putting a smilie with a mchine guy next to it.
George Bush :mad: just doesn’t get the same point across as George Bush (imagine a smiley with a machine gun here firing at Bush).
The rolleyes smilie here doesn’t even roll his eyes. They’re just pointed up. I always thought it was just a guy looking at the words above him. :rolleyes: When used as an entire post, it just looks like he’s stressing the previous post (by looking at it) instead of disparaging it (by rolling his eyes).
A hasidic smilie? In just what capacity are we supposed to use this? ;j When we discussing bagels in in CS?
I don’t even understand the emotion of some of them.
I can’t use this guy :o because he looks like he’s yawning, but the “highlight” says ‘embarassment’.
Or how about ? I always thought this was a guy laughing, you know, one more than . But his “highlight” says ‘stick out tongue’. What if I want to tell another poster I thought something was funny, but he thinks I’m sticking my tongue out at him?
??? Does this mean “I’m in on that with you” or does it mean “I’m flirting with you”?
I have seen the horror of message boards with animated smilies. Okay, sure, they’re kinda cute. But do people restrict themselves to adding a single well-chosen smilie to augment their writing by communicating an emotion that might not be obvious?
HELL NO.
There are gobs and gobs of posts that are nothing but a single smilie.
There are posts with long chains of various smilies undergoing various contortions, morphs, and sexual violations, apparently intended to convey the complex emotional journey of the poster.
There are freakin’ chorus lines of choreographed smilies.
In signatures.
Thanks all the same, but I find that my reading comprehension is better when my eyeballs are not bleeding.
Personally, I agree with most of the responses, but what I really think we desperatly lack is a “wanky.” This would be an animated smilie which rolls its eyes while its hand pumps up and down in a dismissive masturbatory gesture. I know that I actually do this when I read the jeremiads of some of our more, um, “emphatic” posters and admit it…so do you…
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, “I miss Smashy.”
That said, Podkayne and Queen Tonya hit the nail right on the head. One should be creative with his writing, not with seizure-inducing, hamster-munching lines of multi-colored circles.
I don’t use smilies that often, but I agree with the OP about and :o – they’re not very good representations of what they’re supposed to convey. ;j is useless. :mad: is so frowny and red-faced that I would only use it if I wanted to convey that I was irrationally angry and pouting at the same time.
:rolleyes: :dubious: :smack: :eek: are all good ones. For some reason, I think of :wally as being way overused by idiots, which is sad considering its noble roots.
Neither one gets a point across… if you hate Bush, try expressing it in fully thought sentences instead of relying on an idiotic mish-mash of singular words and graphics.
Some of the smileys are inconsistantly used, though. I’ve always though it should be:
:smack: - I have said something stupid and now realize it
:rolleyes: - You have said something stupid and deserve contempt - I have said something clever ridiculing you - I have said something clever in the form of a non sequitor
? I always thought this was a guy laughing, you know, one more than 
. But his “highlight” says ‘stick out tongue’. What if I want to tell another poster I thought something was funny, but he thinks I’m sticking my tongue out at him?
??? Does this mean “I’m in on that with you” or does it mean “I’m flirting with you”?
:smack: 
are all good ones. For some reason, I think of :wally as being way overused by idiots, which is sad considering its noble roots.
