The emoticon celebrated it's
25th birthday on Sept. 25th of this year. The emoticon/smiley is a good thing within the internets. It gives the writer the ability to add feeling to what can be a pretty dry medium. Sarcasm is a great friend of the smiley. Many companies make many dollars selling "premium" smilies to the hapless. It's akin to buying porn. Although, if you have to, you really don't know your way around. "But they're fun and cute, and really let me show how cool I am when posting on bulletin boards",
Not.
What gets me though, is those that feel that (almost)every sentence must be punctuated with an(as many as they can squeeze in) emoticon(s). Some even fall victim to actually using them as words. It is quite disturbing to watch this happen, and painful to read. Eventually, I just skip posts from the offender to save my sanity. But, as with any trainwreck, I can't turn away, it's too good not to watch. So, I spiral into a virtual catch-22 which I make every attempt to break away from. Luckily, most times it works.
So, if you think this
may be describing you, it's probably true, and you must make every attempt to come back to reality and use actual words. Everyone who reads you will be silently praising you for doing so. If you think this is about you, and you take offense to these words, please feel free to embrace and use this one within your tirade back at me.
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