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Original bulletin board thread in which ‘:-)’ was proposed

cs.cmu.edu

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Re: Original bulletin board thread in which ‘:-)’ was proposed

#24
post #16
post #5

"o>- I'm glad we are past that.

Funny. I'm just a couple years removed from that thread (I was an undergrad then) and I don't even "get" that emoticon. A person standing on a platform with her arms in the air? Edit: nevermind. Was explained while I was typing.

What does it represent? I doubt understand it

Re: Original bulletin board thread in which ‘:-)’ was proposed

#25
post #2

Interesting thing to note is that before Fahlman suggested ":-)" symbol, Leonard Hamey suggested "{#}" (see 17-Sep-82 17:42 post). After that, someone suggested "\__/" (see 20-Sep-82 17:56 post). But only ":-)" gained popularity. It is funny to imagine how emoticons ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_emoticons ) would look today if one of alternative symbols was accepted?

Not only # \__/ and :-) were suggested but also '&', which the explanation on why is (to say at least) imaginative:

17-Sep-82 17:40 Keith Wright at CMU-10A *%&#$ Jokes! No, no, no! Surely everyone will agree that "&" is the funniest character on the keyboard. It looks funny (like a jolly fat man in convulsions of laughter). It sounds funny (say it loud and fast three times). I just know if I could get my nose into the vacuum of the CRT it would even smell funny!

Re: Original bulletin board thread in which ‘:-)’ was proposed

#26
post #18

I'm sure :-) has been independently invented a million times.

Indeed, there is evidence of the kind of typographic play behind the 'smiley' from as early as the 19th century:

http://theday.co.uk/arts/internet-celebrates-thirty-years-of...

Re: Original bulletin board thread in which ‘:-)’ was proposed

#27
It makes me a bit of a luddite (and a heck of a curmudgeon), but it always makes me a little sad when good ol' ASCII smileys are rendered all fancy-like. There's something charming and hackerish about showing it as a 7-bit glyph.

I think the Internet fundamentally changed when that happened.

Tangentially-related, I can't fathom why someone would post YouTube videos of `telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl`.

Re: Original bulletin board thread in which ‘:-)’ was proposed

#29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

would be interesting to know where that one started...

There is a whole parallel smiley history from Asia that either hasn't been documented as well as the western smileys or simply hasn't been translated.

The notable thing about asian smileys is that they have the same horizon as the text, whereas western smileys needs to be turned 90 degrees. Compare (^.^) with :-)

So given that ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ is both unicode and horizontal indicates that it is either from Asia or came to be after asian smileys became more prevalent in the west.

Re: Original bulletin board thread in which ‘:-)’ was proposed

#30
post #2

Interesting thing to note is that before Fahlman suggested ":-)" symbol, Leonard Hamey suggested "{#}" (see 17-Sep-82 17:42 post). After that, someone suggested "\__/" (see 20-Sep-82 17:56 post). But only ":-)" gained popularity. It is funny to imagine how emoticons ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_emoticons ) would look today if one of alternative symbols was accepted?

Of course, Fahlman is a Lisper, so of course he's going to use parens... ;)
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