All Smile(y)s for 25 years

The internet emoticons have turned 25. The little smiling face that lets you portray you expressions better than any number of words has been around for twenty five years? Well, I don’t know. I’ve been using it since I started using the computer so for me, it has existed forever.

Pittsburgh IT expert Professor Scott Fahlman is credited for putting together the punctuations to make what is a smiley. He had intended to put up a better demonstration of miscomprehended attempts at humor on his faculty's bulletin boards.

Fahlman posted a message on an online message board on September 19, 1982 which read, “I propose the following character sequence for joke markers: :-). Read it sideways.” Also, a digital frown :-( was put up for the first time in the same post.

The meek smiley caught on around Carnegie Mellon in no time and was soon dispersed to other universities and research labs through the computer networks available then.

Falhman’s inspiration behind the creation of smiley was probably the poor humor of scientists as he said, “The problem was that if someone made a sarcastic remark, a few readers would fail to get the joke, and each of them would post a lengthy diatribe in response. That's how scientists are.”

So in order to classify light comments as jokes that are not intended to be taken seriously, Falhman began to 'joke mark' posts with smileys to allow people form a rational perception of sarcastic humor.

As anything else would, the simple text-based smiley has advanced manifolds in the 25 years of its existence. In many programs the text gets converted into animated icons that are not just limited to the smiles and frowns but can portray hundreds of other expressions.

Falhman, however isn’t very pleased about it. He insists that it is much better to experiment with text-based faces. Not many would agree but the animated versions of his smileys make the original creator, “Not only sad, but angry. I hate those symbols,” he said.