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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

#31

Post by cholantesh »

jgw wrote: post #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`.

Emojis are stunningly ugly to me, though I did appreciate throwing out the custom doge and Doom space marine ones at random when my team used Slack.

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

#32

Post by ino »

jaywunder wrote: post #24
dhimes wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's a skirt

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

#33

Post by kenbellows »

jaywunder wrote: post #24
dhimes wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It represents a person (presumably a woman) wearing a dress/skirt.

  o>-    arms raised
  -    torso

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

#34

Post by kjhughes »

I vividly remember having the following conversation with a fellow CMU undergrad around this time:

Me: What's with all the :-) in the posts?

Friend: It indicates joking.

Me: Why?

Friend: What's it look like?

Me: A pinball plunger.

Friend: Rotate 90 degrees.

Me: Ohhhhhh.

:-)

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

#36

Post by gberger »

ZeljkoS wrote: 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?

I don't understand "{#}" and "\__/". Are they supposed to be arbitrary markers, or interpreted in some way?

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

#37

Post by kenbellows »

kbart wrote: post #21
minivan wrote: post #5

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

Past what? Topics interesting to women? Though I agree that this emoticon is ugly and it took me some time to understand what it symbolizes.

Past the point where we thought that ideas should be or even can be segmented into those interesting to women vs those interesting to men, which is a rather silly idea rooted in gender unfounded stereotypes and possibly a bit of sexism.

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

#38

Post by leereeves »

ZeljkoS wrote: 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?

Perhaps {#} would have evolved into Japanese-style emoticons like: (-_-) and (^.^)

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

#39

Post by p333347 »

kjhughes wrote: post #34

I vividly remember having the following conversation with a fellow CMU undergrad around this time: Me: What's with all the :-) in the posts? Friend: It indicates joking. Me: Why? Friend: What's it look like? Me: A pinball plunger. Friend: Rotate 90 degrees. Me: Ohhhhhh. :-)

I think this is one of those things that once you see you can never unsee. :-)

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

#40

Post by Ntrails »

wodenokoto wrote: post #29
tetraodonpuffer wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 b…

I done screwed up. I hope nobody saw...

>_>

>_(I always felt like finding some of these alt smilies increased expressiveness)

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