We want more emoticons!

Imagine if we had a "pissing into the wind" emoticon?

I understand Scher's explanation. It was what I was trying to say, though with less eloquence. Well, Scher is an Olympic runner and I cannot reach her yet :p ;) As for the "pissing into the wind" emoticon, I humbly believe it should be added to see what happens. A whole new line of debate may surely arise, as people will never cease their hunger for talking :p :D

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Originally Posted by Admin

Imagine if we had a "pissing into the wind" emoticon?

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:rofl: That's a good one! :lol:

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Originally Posted by Scheherazade

Truth be told, I know I will be using that particular a lot here on the Forum as, being an internet user for 15 years and a member of this Forum for almost 6 years, I feel like I have seen and heard it all.

:beatdeadhorse5:

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I agree with you...it's not a literal thing at all...just a joke of sorts and the futility of it is key to the fact it is not being condoned. And your last statements are what I had imagined....I bet you have seen and heard it all.

So as not to offend anyone here I will post this one :banghead:...could be interpretted "beating a brickwall to death" or "beating your head against a brick wall"...which we seem to be doing in here right now over the said subject of the 'abused' dead horse.

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Originally Posted by Janine

So as not to offend anyone here I will post this one :banghead:...could be interpretted "beating a brickwall to death" or "beating your head against a brick wall"...which we seem to be doing in here right now over the said subject of the 'abused' dead horse.

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Oh My, now I see why I have this terrible headache! :ack2: :crazy:

I know I'm in the minority here, but I find the new emoticons annoying as the really hot place down below. Admin, I know you can't please everyone, so I'm not asking for any change or whatnot, just that, man they tend to make a page look awfully cluttered. But I supposed over-use of anything will do that.

Geez, as they say "you can please some of the people part of the time"...something like that and now I forget how the rest of the saying goes - but I'm sure everyone has heard it and knows what I mean...

One of the reasons I wanted emoticons was to convey my messages properly. When I write something, it does not have the same effect as you don't know the way I meant it. Emoticons make it all so much simpler.

I just remember once how someone completely misunderstood me and all of it just because, I forgot to use ':p' emoticon.

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Originally Posted by The Comedian

I know I'm in the minority here....

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You may be, but I'm there with you.

A year ago, another forum to which I contribute developed a glitch that meant it couldn't display smileys. I posted the following, which seems relevant to the current thread...

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It's been a tough week. I had to go to go to the middle of nowhere - Leeds, for God's sake. Actually, not Leeds. A town near Leeds. The outskirts of nowhere.

But as I sat there in the soulless armchair in my soulless hotel room contemplating the consistently dull room-service menu - no-soul food - there was one happy prospect to divert me from the possibility of lying on the floor with my head in the minibar seeing whether I could drink the entire contents before my lips froze stiff. I was delighted to whack up the wi-fi on the laptop and log in here confident that, due to a fortunate technical circumstance, I would see no smileys.

Emoticons have only one thing in their favour - and that's the word 'emoticons', which is a clever little coining. It's just a pity that such a crafty word is wasted on such an artless and dumb collection of simple-minded mini-graphics.

What are they for, smileys? Those who defend them act as if they were a vital component of the ability to express oneself clearly on the page. They bleat that in cyberspace no one can hear you smile, or wink, or frown, or stick your tongue out and wiggle your fingers with your thumbs in your ears.

That's true. It's been true of the written word for five thousand years. Do we believe, then, that from the day the first flattened papyrus reed was dried in the sun until, say, 1991, no one had ever been able to tell whether what they were reading was supposed to be funny, or sad, or a bit of a josh, or an expression of sympathy, support, disagreement or semi-serious outrage?

No. The written word can do all that without the aid of little yellow faces to give the reader clues as to the writer's intention. That's what writing is for.

Well, yes - say the smilophiles - but emoticons are only for, like, the Web. No one would use them them in serious writing - like business e-mails, or fiction, or an article for an e-zine.

Actually, people do. I had an employee fired for doing it only last week. But if it were true that there are types of writing in which smileys aren't appropriate, then we've developed a two-tier system of quality for the written word.

There's writing that matters - where the words are carefully chosen in order to express meaning with clarity and the polite assumption of literate intelligence on the part of the reader. That's the stuff without the smileys.

And then there's unimportant, slapdash, what-the-hell writing, where the sentences needn't be too carefully crafted because they are covered with fatuous yellow grinning faces that help the reader guess what the hell it's all supposed to convey - because, understandably, they might not be able to decipher the meaning from the sloppy prose alone .

The smiley, in fact, does have a use, it seems. It's a coded way of the writer saying, Reader, I don't care about you enough to actually bother writing this well.

My objection to smileys, then, is that they provide an excuse for scrimping on the effort put into writing. You don't have to think too hard about how your words come over on the page because the smiley will show what you mean.

I think that that's a cop-out in the short-term and a damaging habit in the long-term. The way to get good at writing the big stuff well is to write everything well. The way to make every sentence count in a novel or an essay or a letter to your loved ones is to make every sentence count in your note to the milkman, your responses to your friends' blogs, your contributions to the on-line forum. Emoticons mitigate against that constant practice by making laziness easier and more acceptable.

Am I making an incredibly big deal of smileys? Well - the smileys are just an example of a wider concern. The question really should be, am I making an incredibly big deal of this whole thing about putting focussed effort into writing of any kind?

And the answer is - yes, you bet I am.

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Originally Posted by MarkBastable

You may be, but I'm there with you.

A year ago, another forum to which I contribute developed a glitch that meant it couldn't display smileys. I posted the following, which seems relevant to the current thread...

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It's been a tough week. I had to go to go to the middle of nowhere - Leeds, for God's sake. Actually, not Leeds. A town near Leeds. The outskirts of nowhere.

But as I sat there in the soulless armchair in my soulless hotel room contemplating the consistently dull room-service menu - no-soul food - there was one happy prospect to divert me from the possibility of lying on the floor with my head in the minibar seeing whether I could drink the entire contents before my lips froze stiff. I was delighted to whack up the wi-fi on the laptop and log in here confident that, due to a fortunate technical circumstance, I would see no smileys.

Emoticons have only one thing in their favour - and that's the word 'emoticons', which is a clever little coining. It's just a pity that such a crafty word is wasted on such an artless and dumb collection of simple-minded mini-graphics.

What are they for, smileys? Those who defend them act as if they were a vital component of the ability to express oneself clearly on the page. They bleat that in cyberspace no one can hear you smile, or wink, or frown, or stick your tongue out and wiggle your fingers with your thumbs in your ears.

That's true. It's been true of the written word for five thousand years. Do we believe, then, that from the day the first flattened papyrus reed was dried in the sun until, say, 1991, no one had ever been able to tell whether what they were reading was supposed to be funny, or sad, or a bit of a josh, or an expression of sympathy, support, disagreement or semi-serious outrage?

No. The written word can do all that without the aid of little yellow faces to give the reader clues as to the writer's intention. That's what writing is for.

Well, yes - say the smilophiles - but emoticons are only for, like, the Web. No one would use them them in serious writing - like business e-mails, or fiction, or an article for an e-zine.

Actually, people do. I had an employee fired for doing it only last week. But if it were true that there are types of writing in which smileys aren't appropriate, then we've developed a two-tier system of quality for the written word.

There's writing that matters - where the words are carefully chosen in order to express meaning with clarity and the polite assumption of literate intelligence on the part of the reader. That's the stuff without the smileys.

And then there's unimportant, slapdash, what-the-hell writing, where the sentences needn't be too carefully crafted because they are covered with fatuous yellow grinning faces that help the reader guess what the hell it's all supposed to convey - because, understandably, they might not be able to decipher the meaning from the sloppy prose alone .

The smiley, in fact, does have a use, it seems. It's a coded way of the writer saying, Reader, I don't care about you enough to actually bother writing this well.

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Well, so you basically mean that while conversing, I should basically use "Oh man, I am laughing so hard because the last statement you made was so funny." instead of simply using :lol:

Well, I don't think smilies were ever made to substitute the "words in literary works". They have more been used to display expressions while conversing.

One of my friends a few days back messaged me, 'Twilight on Star Movies' and I replied wow!

Now, what does that wow signify? "Amusement, excitement?"
No, I was being sarcastic. Now "wow :| " does imply sarcasm and not merely "wow!"


Edit:-

Oh and another thing,

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There's writing that matters - where the words are carefully chosen in order to express meaning with clarity and the polite assumption of literate intelligence on the part of the reader. That's the stuff without the smileys.

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Now, maybe I'm going a bit far-fetched but in your post, you italicized two words "for" and outskirts". Now, why? To express the emphasis? Shouldn't you have done that via your words (by carefully chosing them in order to express the meaning with clarity) rather than employing to cheap means such as italicizing.

Italics I'm okay with. On the other hand, I think there is no hell too horrible for those who overuse exclamation marks. Keep it to two or three per million words and you're probably safe from eternal damnation. Any more than that - it's brimstone time.

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Originally Posted by MarkBastable

Italics I'm okay with. On the other hand, I think there is no hell too horrible for those who overuse exclamation marks. Keep it to two or three per million words and you're probably safe from eternal damnation. Any more than that - it's brimstone time.

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Okay with Italics, why? Even that compromises with the facts you stated in your original post...

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Originally Posted by Nikhar

Okay with Italics, why? Even that compromises with the facts you stated in your original post...

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Because writing is a representation of language. And italics are part of that representation - they represent syllabic stress.

Emoticons are illustration. They're explanatory pictures.

And the test of the difference, I think, is to read examples of each out loud.





I'll eat almost anything, but I'm not putting that in my mouth.

I'll eat almost anything, but I'm not putting that in my mouth.

I'll eat almost anything, but I'm not putting that in my mouth.

I'll eat almost anything, but I'm not putting that in my mouth. :eek2:


The emoticon doesn't do the same job as italics, because it's not a representation of anything specific to language.

However, the question I'd ask is, if you were writing a novel, would you use emoticons? If you would, then I guess you've taken them on entirely as part of written language, and who can say you nay?

But if you wouldn't then you probably think that there are times when they are appropriate and times when they aren't - and so all we differ on is the 'when'. For you it's 'sometimes'. I'd say it's 'never'.

Oh, lighten up...we are not writing novels here...we are simply conversing. Who would ever think a simple thread discussing emoticons, would cause such contraversy. It was nice of Admin to take the time to add them by request. If anyone doesn't like them, then don't have to use them. They are only a tool to be used with discrimination. I think in the Birthday and party type threads they are totally valid...or any other light conversation...such as profile messages, PM's, etc. It's not like people are posting their poetry or short stories with emoticons dispersed within the text. They are only in place to have a little fun at times and lighten things up.

I have definitely seen cases where the use or absence of a smiley or a wink makes a difference. Of course, it might've been possible to write those messages in a way that made the emoticon unnecessary, but I think it might've also resulted in sentences that suddenly broke the conversational style and tone of the "conversation."

Here, we often find group of people in a forum's thread (people with varying degrees of familiarity) sometimes typing back and forth with a frequency more like talking at the bus stop than via pre-internet written correspondence. A letter between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams would never have simply been three words long, e.g. "Oh, yeah, right," yet this sort of remark might very well occur here. Sometimes, these conversational snippets can benefit from emoticons, because necessary tonal and body-language cues are otherwise absent. Should we stop online chat altogether? Or make ourselves suddenly go through contortions as the specters of sarcasm and rudeness close in?

That being said, I am going to (not just sit, but) stand firmly on the fence, because it maybe is a bad habit to get into--not just using emoticons, but the general idea that text is the same as regular conversation. I think online chat, forums, and phone text messages end up being the primary means by which a lot of people get their writing practice, these days. And that's too bad.

Emoticons are fine if we're trying to make sure that a delicate back-and-forth between strangers (in front of a bunch of other strangers) doesn't turn into some sort of minefield of miscommunication, but they contribute to a rather coarse illusion (of physical presence) that can maybe steer people away from ideas and their orderly expression. In a way, emoticons are like the stitches in Frankenstein's imperfect, rag-tag skin, allowing an imperfect construction to shamble forward, human-like, compelling for all of its oddity and incompletion. But a truly beautiful child, rich with seamless complexity, comes together of a piece, and is no illusion at all.

I like lengthy and thought-out posts, now and then. Sorry if this one needed another week of work. :yesnod::toetap05:

Just a request. Can we return the old wink smile. This one ;) is impotent. :lol:

I liked Janine's and billl's respective posts. I very much agree with both. As usually, billl amazes me with his eloquence.

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Originally Posted by Virgil

Just a request. Can we return the old wink smile. This one ;) is impotent. :lol:

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I like this one http://smiles.kolobok.us/standart/derisive.gif and this one http://smiles.kolobok.us/standart/grin.gif .... but I'm not sure if they are impotent :p :lol:

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Originally Posted by MarkBastable

However, the question I'd ask is, if you were writing a novel, would you use emoticons? If you would, then I guess you've taken them on entirely as part of written language, and who can say you nay?

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To this, I already had answered

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Originally Posted by Nikhar

Well, I don't think smilies were ever made to substitute the "words in literary works". They have more been used to display expressions while conversing.

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Originally Posted by billl

I have definitely seen cases where the use or absence of a smiley or a wink makes a difference. Of course, it might've been possible to write those messages in a way that made the emoticon unnecessary, but I think it might've also resulted in sentences that suddenly broke the conversational style and tone of the "conversation."

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My sentiments exactly.


@Virgil...

Impotent...lol :lol:


Oh sorry...maybe I should have said...Hey Virgil, you know I'm laughing so hard because the last statement where you used the word 'impotent' was very funny. And now I'm winking at you.

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Originally Posted by Nikhar

One of the reasons I wanted emoticons was to convey my messages properly. When I write something, it does not have the same effect as you don't know the way I meant it. Emoticons make it all so much simpler.

I just remember once how someone completely misunderstood me and all of it just because, I forgot to use ':p' emoticon.

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I've just read this, and I agree. It's the same reason why I use them. I dislike being misinterpreted, and then going back to clarify, when it's better to make oneself clear from start. My humble opinion.

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Originally Posted by Maximilianus

I've just read this, and I agree. It's the same reason why I use them. I dislike being misinterpreted, and then going back to clarify, when it's better to make oneself clear from start. My humble opinion.

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I do agree so much. I'd hate someone to think me to be a troll when I was trying to be an elf.

Nah...bad similie. :goof:

Thanks Max!, and I apologize to Janine and Nikhar for not mentioning my agreement with them and then making most of my post a mere restatement of what they had said. And my apologies to MarkBastable as well, for piling on and then retreating to a cautious balance, with his timely protests allowing me to take such a stance between the empowering and limiting poles of technological development.

Great... They are a little confusing.

Are we seriously that emotional?

Oh well. They are pretty awesome.

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Originally Posted by Nikhar

I do agree so much. I'd hate someone to think me to be a troll when I was trying to be an elf.

Nah...bad similie. :goof:

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Then you may benefit from http://smiles.kolobok.us/artists/just_cuz/JC_clover.gif and http://smiles.kolobok.us/artists/just_cuz/JC_kissme.gif ....... :D

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Originally Posted by billl

Thanks Max!, and I apologize to Janine and Nikhar for not mentioning my agreement with them and then making most of my post a mere restatement of what they had said

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Don't worry about that billl. We all have the right to express ourselves with our own lexicon. Even after others have reached the same conclusions with their own.

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Originally Posted by Heathcliff

Are we seriously that emotional?

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I'm sure I am :)

So many possibilities. Although they will be so hard to remember, you'd have to go in and click them each time.

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Originally Posted by Heathcliff

So many possibilities. Although they will be so hard to remember, you'd have to go in and click them each time.

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Well... that's one of the smiley realm's drawbacks. We need good memory to recall about each one, and they can be quite many http://smiles.kolobok.us/artists/jus...C_thinking.gif

http://smiles.kolobok.us/artists/jus...C_thinking.gif

Your new favourite Max? http://smiles.kolobok.us/artists/jus...C_thinking.gif

Could be... let me think http://smiles.kolobok.us/artists/jus...C_thinking.gif ... Yea! until I get a thing for another one :D ....... hmmm, but which one will be next? http://smiles.kolobok.us/artists/jus...C_thinking.gif

Oooooh...I see http://smiles.kolobok.us/artists/min...eanglasses.gif

Come on, there are six I like.
;)
:wave:
:D
:rolleyes:
:rofl:
:thumbs_up

Can someone please add this to the collection? http://l.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/mesg/emoticons7/66.gif

I'll be needing to use that very often. :p

Good choices, Nik and Heath http://smiles.kolobok.us/artists/just_cuz/JC_rockin.gif

Yes. Of course.

How do they add them anyway?

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Originally Posted by Scheherazade

All right, I think I will move right in and bring some perspective into this non-discussion.

Nobody on the Forum nor the smiley in question means to condone animal beating; what is more, in my very humble non-moderator opinion, to look at it in that way is rather superficial and somewhat dramatic.

The saying "beating/flogging a dead horse" means that "a particular request or line of conversation is already foreclosed or otherwise resolved, and any attempt to continue it is futile." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flogging_a_dead_horse

So, it does not advocate a perverse and cruel liking for having dead animals beaten; on the contrary, it emphasises the futility of such an effort. Similarly, the smiley is also used for this very purpose: sometimes the same discussions/arguments are repeated one too many times on the internet and only the expression "beating up a dead horse" defines their futility.

Truth be told, I know I will be using that particular a lot here on the Forum as, being an internet user for 15 years and a member of this Forum for almost 6 years, I feel like I have seen and heard it all.

:beatdeadhorse5:

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This manages to miss the point completely. We all know the expression and recognize it as intended by the emoticon. The point is that offering a visual depiction of it among others that are meant to be amusing is neither funny nor respectful of horses dead or alive.

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Originally Posted by PrinceMyshkin

This manages to miss the point completely. We all know the expression and recognize it as intended by the emoticon. The point is that offering a visual depiction of it among others that are meant to be amusing is neither funny nor respectful of horses dead or alive.

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Her explanation, in fact, addresses the issue directly by stating that to look at it in that way is rather superficial and somewhat dramatic. Perhaps you simply don't want to admit that she's absolutely correct: you're overreacting in this instance.

Regards,

Istvan

Can we have one for 'throwing out the baby with the bathwater'?

As the purpose of this thread was to get more emoticons, which has been achieved, it has served its purpose and is now closed.