The venerable mainstay of IM conversations and emails will celebrate its 25th birthday in September.
I have a love/ hate relationship with the emoticon… I use it a ton as I tend to be a sarcastic person by nature, which doesn’t always come across in written text, but I also cannot for the life of me imagine using ones outside of the standard: :) / ;) / :P / :( . What’s the point, I’d rather have a face-to-face conversation if we’re going to be showering that much emotion on each other.
What about you? Do you love emoticons? Hate ‘em? Can’t type without ‘em? Do you feel they’ve been essential in potentially mitigating the cold hard text of internet communications?
Or are they dinosaurs soon to be replaced with winking and dancing avatars? (which of course would lead me into a rant about Second Life and the fact that I barely have enough time to do my own hair in the morning, let alone pick out new outfits and makeup for my virtual likeness…) Or maybe I’m just getting old. ;)