Tuesday, September 18, 2007

: - ) Is Older, (And Wiser) Than Me

Happy Birthday : -) smiley! It's your time to shine! According to an MSNBC.com article, tomorrow is the 25th anniversary of the keystrokes heard around the world: the ever dreaded colon, hyphen, parenthesis e-smiley. The precursor to every slanty mouthed, money eyed, almost throwing up face we all love to add to our instant messages and e-mails to be extra cute and annoying. I was completely unaware that this world-famous smiley emoticon is a local phenomenon, created by one Scott E. Fahlman, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. According to him, he was the first ever to post this symbol on September 19, 1982 at 11:44 am on an online discussion board about the lack of emotion in online communication. "I propose the following character sequence for joke markers: :-)," wrote Fahlman. "Read it sideways."

THNX Fahlman for making cyberspace so much cuter. ;-(

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Honest? There is a guy really taking credit for the smiley face? Poor guy......here, I thought I had no life!

JJB said...

OMG I'm gonna TXT my BFF Jill about this ASAP :-)

oh, and Prof Fahlman should pin a @)------ on his -

(rose on his nose)

Anonymous said...

(.) (.) hehe, boobies!
(|)- hehe, ass crack!

When is the anniversary? and who took credit?