Monday 20 July 2009

EmotiCONs

I had a brief text message exchange with a friend of mine earlier today. It went like this:
"Hey man, have you heard of a band called Fighting With Wire?"
"No ;)"
Now, aside from the rather abrupt reply to what was admittedly a yes/no question, can anyone tell me what the purpose of the winking smiley is in this message? According to the dictionary, 'to wink' is 'to close and open one eye quickly as a hint or signal or with some sly meaning', yet i can't really see where the possible sly meaning is in that no ... was it a yes? was it a maybe? i'm really confused!


... and this, to me, is symbolic of what is wrong with society today! No, wait, hear me out!


Communication these days is so quick-fire that people don't seem to take a second thought about what they're saying or what they're replying to. Have you actually answered all the questions you were being asked? Have you used proper grammar and diction? Has your predictive text mangled the crux of your message beyond all recognition? Emoticons, for me, are becoming a part of that. I have no quarrel with people using emoticons in the slightest. I use them fairly regularly in texts/emails/msn/etc. But what I do take issue with is the irresponsible splattering of irrelevant smileys all over the place!

For example, there are some people who open up a conversation with a smiley! Obviously i'm talking about MSN or text message or some form of electronic chat! It'd be quite disturbing if someone just came up to you and grinned at you as a prelude to conversation ... although come to think on it that's essentially what they are doing! What happened to saying "Hello, how are you?" or "Hi" - you can't get much shorter than that - or "Hola" or "Jambo" or "Bonjour" or "Howdy" or any of the billion ways humans have for communicating a greeting! So what do i do? I ignore them, until they actually greet me. Thus the conversation goes like this:
:D
-
:)
-
:D
-
:P
-
:(
-
Why are you ignoring me?
Because you're an insufferable bore who has all the conversational skills of a decomposing zebra?
:'(
Actually that leads my nicely into my next point; modern communication makes it so easy to ignore people, the internet especially is a coward's paradise! I realise this may seem slightly hypocritical given the conversational thread above, but in my defence i only ignore people who are retarded and if someone behaved like that msn conversation in real life (and make no mistake, the internet does NOT constitute real life) then i'd actually tell them to their face what a dumbass they were, obviously in a polite way so's not to make them cry, i'm not a complete tool!

So, what's my point? Well, in all honesty i've forgotten, i was merely vexed and this has served to vent my spleen ... so smile and have a LOLHog/HedgeLOL ;)

2 comments:

  1. The problem with teh internets is that it's impossible to tell if people are being serious... Or, put another way, there are so many stupid people on the internet, people frequently ARE being serious when you'd think they were joking. Hence, you can put in emoticons to hammer people over the head with your meaning.

    Yeah? :P

    ReplyDelete
  2. kind of ... i've not no quarrel with emoticons being used in their rightful place, but using them in the manner i described above is just retarded ... it distracts you from the message itself

    ... your comment begs the question though, how long can you use these things ironically before they cease to be ironic?

    ReplyDelete