Emoticons

Please, for the love of conversation, can we stop with the emoticons already?!

I was fine when emoticons were simple smiley or frowny faces. I'm even okay with the wink. I think that's where we need to draw the line.

I'm not half witted. I do understand and value emoticons. I'm a sarcastic person, sometimes a little wink is needed to keep the reader in the loop of my intentions. And nothing follows the words No offense better than a smiley face. Such as, "You're not a very manly man. No offense :)"

I think the world would continue nicely if we smiled, frowned, or winked. Your text is no better because you emphatically smiled. You don't need to furrow your brow via characters. And what's with sticking your tongue out? When in real life converstation would it be acceptable to stick your tongue out at me? It's not. Ever. Not when you're 3 (Alice's latest) and not when you're 33.

Were you aware that someone has discovered a string of letters and punctuation that creates a cat face? Seriously. I can't, for the life of me, think of a text conversation where you couldn't possibly convey your message without a cat face. Maybe I'm slow and the jokes really on me. Somehow I doubt it.

Tuesday, April 3

Hatta: 8-|

Me: What's that supposed to be?

Hatta: It was the "eye-roll" emoticon.

See this is the problem with emoticons, trying to decipher the Morse code like symbols detracts from the original message.

My final plea to end the emoticon insanity is brought to you by, yet again, another text exchange from my dear husband. He is hopelessly in favor of emoticons it seems. We were...what do the cool kids call it? Oh right, sexting.

Hatta: I'd be happy to oblige.

Me: Sounds enjoyable.

Hatta: :-p

Hatta: That's me.

Hatta: This is u #:-s

Me: I think your attempt at emoticons caused me to rethink.

Hatta: Ugh

I think I've made my point. Nothing enjoyable happened, thanks to good ole emoticons.