:)
That has become my favourite smiley.
When I first encountered smileys, I was in form 3 and still new to whole email/icq business. You might not believe me, but I seriously did not know what smileys were. I saw patterns of colons and brackets in emails and my brows were furrowed in frustration as I tried to understand why people commited the same kind of typing errors over and over again. The “)/0″ key is so high up on the keyboard it seems unlikely anyone would hit it by mistake anyway.
Cautiously, I concluded that it must be some sort of code I was not privy to. I dared not ask for fear that I would be called a noob. (Imagine! You draw a smiley during a chat get asked what it is. Wouldn’t you just be dumbfounded by the question? I would, I think.)
Until one day, I tilted my head to the left while figuring out the meaning of ; ) and oh, it was a moment of epiphany! A face was staring straight at me, a face was smiling back at me! I finally understood. I began hunting down those patterns in my inbox and deciphering exactly what emotion each combination was trying to portray. Haha, so stupid la.
Anyway, the reason I’m suddenly writing about smileys is because I no longer like the long cartoonish eyes of “=)”, once my favourite smiley. A bit too fake la. Small eyes look better to me now. It’s a simpler and more genuine smile, although I’m not sure how I’ve let these smileys take on personalities.
What do you think? :o)
No need to press “shift” ma when using =), unlike the colon. Anyway, I used “=D” more often.
Eh, I wanna ask, what does “:o)” mean? =P
Comment by wei liang — May 3, 2008 @ 4:17 pm
LOL!
Incidentally, my English teacher in australian matriculation were very grateful for me to tell her the meaning of “LOL”. She said she had been wincing at the stupid word for a long time, thinking that it’s some stupid new age language.
Comment by Chang Yang — May 3, 2008 @ 5:01 pm
Originally, I used the colon but switched it to “=” a few years back because I thought it looks better. But I agree, using the equal sign instead of the colon makes it looks childish.
Comment by ming — May 3, 2008 @ 9:13 pm
i prefer the colon… but i notice u like to use the equal sign, so i try to use it when i type to u, haha… and, just ask when u dunno what they are saying… when i first started, i’ve alwasy been dumbfounded by all these shortforms and stuff… like cr8, ttyl etc etc… cant think of a gd example for now… oh, e also… which means the btw… haha… yup, just ask… it’s the fastest wat to learn!
Comment by bean — May 3, 2008 @ 9:31 pm
I still like =). Haha.
If people use short form which I don’t know, I just ask. You know… just in case they are meaning something bad and I still 傻傻不懂.
Comment by day-dreamer — May 3, 2008 @ 11:44 pm
Eh same, I am good with
or =) but since you tend to use =) I use ) too, and another friend of mine prefers equal sign too, so I think it stuck.
As with emoticons, yes I used to be blur like you. (Everyone had that moment at least once le.) Initially I thought it held no significance, just typos… then I began to notice “eh, if you flip around the text is actually smiling at you…” hehe, nowadays I Google or ask if I see an unknown acronym or even some cheem word.
Comment by Chadin Anuwattanaporn — May 5, 2008 @ 9:21 pm
Jasmine! Have not read your blog since December…and first thing i see today is your smiley! =) =)
=D is probably happier =D
Comment by Weijian — May 6, 2008 @ 1:27 pm
i would think XD to be happier, haha..
Comment by bean — May 6, 2008 @ 11:12 pm