http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/6-message-board-announcements/62868517
Note the date on that post. 2 weeks ago and they just finally added spoiler tags. :rolleyes:
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Well played, sir. Well played.
What is that, the Bedroom Eyes smiley?
It’s against the rules, here, to respond appropriately to that.
NM… wrong forum.
we can’t say “Cunt” here.
I’m probably going to get dinged for that.
It’s one of those green girls Captain Kirk…entertained.
(!)
Damn thing is upside down.
I’m trying to figure out how to turn elmwood’s creation upside down. No doubt he already knows how.
(¡) 
damn it…i always miss the obvious…
You know, you could have put one of these (¡) at the end of your post.:rolleyes:
Now you’re just rubbing it in…
O_o That still takes a bit of skill, from what I can see. Yes, he needs a hobby. But holy crap, he does it well!
I am not questioning the idea that emoticons, in general, act as softeners. Particularly, the smiley, the winking smiley, the big grin, etc.
I am, however, questioning how the rolleyes smiley particularly is a softener. Nothing about that face is a softening of the emotions displayed. Just like in real life, rolling your eyes at somebody is not a softening of emotional content. It is a dismissive move. It is the expression “what you said is unworthy of consideration”. It is the equivalent of “that is just stupid”.
:rolleyes:
There’s no way he’s not using some sort of script or utility to convert those from gif to vB. (It wouldn’t be that hard – you just need to grab the RGB values of each pixel of a smiley into the closest vB color field around each █.) Elmwood is way too computer savvy to do something that repetitive manually.
Emoticons are just like curse words, they can be a crutch for someone with a poor vocabulary. At the same time, somtimes “fuck” is the only word that works. Someone who over uses any particular emoticon is no worse than anyone who overuses a particular word or phrase. It probably just seems a little bit worse here because they stick out visually where certain words will only stick out if you read the post. But, at worst, I can’t see how replying to an entire post with a roll-eyes emoticon is any worse than simply say “that point isn’t even worth responding to”. Yeah, someone could take it to mean “that point is fucking stupid and so are you” and be offended by that, but that’s more on the person over-reacting since it doesn’t inherently mean that, certaintly not just by itself.
I’d rather just see the board culture go against people who respond with just emoticons the same way we respond to people who type out in text speak and not just ask for the emoticon to be removed altogether.
Well they haven’t come out with the Picard Facepalm emoticon yet…
Whew. Because my cites were flakey, though I didn’t know quite how prove something that seemed so obvious to me.
Often it’s not used to soften. Actually, methinks it usually doesn’t soften. That said, sarcasm unaccompanied by any emoticon can look unduly harsh. Pinning a rolleyes next to it retains the much of the negativity, though not all of it. Sometimes. IMHO, YMMV, etc. Anyway, Mr. Dubious tends to soften more, which is part of the reason why I think he is preferable.