
Original bulletin board thread in which ‘:-)’ was proposed - ZeljkoS
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~sef/Orig-Smiley.htm
======
kelvich
Nabokov's interview. The New York Times [1969]

    
    
         -- How  do you rank yourself among writers
         (living) and of the immediate past?
    
         -- I often think there should exist a  special  typographical
         sign  for  a  smile -- some sort of concave mark,
         a supine round bracket, which I would now like to
         trace in reply to your question.

~~~
mjburgess
Which had already been used in the days of the telegraph.

The first use of OMG (oh my god) and other such initialisms was 19th. C.

I would imagine that includes :)

~~~
mipmap04
Also interesting, there is a set of telegraphic codes used to decrease the
size of messages due to cost:

[http://people.eku.edu/styere/Encrypt/ABC4/](http://people.eku.edu/styere/Encrypt/ABC4/)

Definitely has to be one of the earliest examples of electronic signal
compression.

~~~
Scaevolus
Even beyond explicit codebooks, telegraph operators extensively used
standardized abbreviations, meaning what they actually sent/received was
remarkably similar to SMS text-speak, for obvious reasons! "Wr r ty gg r 9" =>
"Where are they going for No. 9?":
[http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_vault/2015/05/11/history_of_t...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_vault/2015/05/11/history_of_telegraph_operators_abbreviations_used_by_telegraphers.html)

------
jgw
It makes me a bit of a luddite (and a heck of a curmudgeon), but it always
makes me a little sad when good ol' ASCII smileys are rendered all fancy-like.
There's something charming and hackerish about showing it as a 7-bit glyph.

I think the Internet fundamentally changed when that happened.

Tangentially-related, I can't fathom why someone would post YouTube videos of
`telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl`.

~~~
cholantesh
Emojis are stunningly ugly to me, though I did appreciate throwing out the
custom doge and Doom space marine ones at random when my team used Slack.

~~~
Cthulhu_
I think it's a cultural thing - or more precisely, a non-culture-specific
thing, which should be as unoffensive as possible.

Honestly, I don't envy those that design and publish emojis, it's a cultural
minefield. :-) has no color, gender, outfit or what-have-you. There's been a
lot of debate about the skin tone of e.g. the thumbs up emoji (which now comes
in half a dozen colors if the relatively ambiguous / non-human yellow isn't to
your needs), the gender of emojis depicting jobs, and the color of outfits of
emojis depicting jobs.

~~~
rdiddly
The smiley is an efficient general-purpose abstraction of reality; the emoji
is a million instances of copy-pasted overly-specific code.

~~~
jobigoud
Emojis are in Unicode. They aren't parsed or converted to multiple glyphs
anymore, the text editor will provide them directly.

[http://unicode.org/emoji/charts/full-emoji-
list.html](http://unicode.org/emoji/charts/full-emoji-list.html)

I was doubtful of emojis at first, but now I'm loving the concept. They really
help me communicate emotions that I wouldn't put into actual words. Smileys
can't really do that.

Culturally I see it as a the first universal (limited) language, using
standardized ideograms. Maybe in a few decades we can express full sentences
and we will have a written language for all Humans to use. 21st century
hieroglyphs.

~~~
Aexian
As a college student, I use emoji constantly to communicate all sorts of
abstract sentiments, but in my experience they can also be irritatingly
ambiguous and highly dependent on cultural norms and interpretation.

Take the thumbs up emoji - within my social circles, the exact same emoji can
be interpreted both as a enthusiastic agreement ("Sure!") and also as a
sarcastic affirmation ("Good for you.").

It's often difficult to infer the intended meaning, even with context, and in
some circumstances I've found emojis have actually added significantly to the
ambiguity and cognitive burden in parsing a text. That's not a problem I have
often faced with simple smileys.

~~~
jobigoud
We need an emoji to represent sarcasm that we would put at the end of the
message, like the use of "/s". And I think this would count as grammar.

------
benbreen
Apropos is this debate about whether an intentional :) shows up in a 1648
poem:

[http://www.slate.com/blogs/lexicon_valley/2014/04/15/emotico...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/lexicon_valley/2014/04/15/emoticon_robert_herrick_s_17th_century_poem_to_fortune_does_not_contain.html)

Here's the verse:

Tumble me down, and I will sit

Upon my ruines (smiling yet :)

I think that the article does a fairly convincing job of showing that this is
just weird 17th century typography, but then again, there was enough
experimentation with printing at the time that it also wouldn't surprise me if
it was intentional, at least at some point in the typesetting process.

~~~
abecedarius
Huh. That helps explain one I found from the 19th C.:
[https://www.flickr.com/photos/abecedarius/3054204291/](https://www.flickr.com/photos/abecedarius/3054204291/)
a little below middle: "... philosophy in small :)"

------
artbikes
Like most of the cultural inventions of virtual communities there was prior
art on PLATO.

[http://www.platohistory.org/blog/2012/09/plato-emoticons-
rev...](http://www.platohistory.org/blog/2012/09/plato-emoticons-
revisited.html)

~~~
Steuard
Those emoticons seem to have been in many ways _better_ than :-) and its
relatives, but it sounds like they 1) relied on details of the platform, and
(related) 2) never caught on more broadly. So I think it's still reasonable to
celebrate the invention of :-) (while maybe imagining how much richer text
conversations might have been if the PLATO text-display system had become
ubiquitous).

~~~
felixgallo
I was definitely using :-) on Plato in 1979. I'd be surprised if Plato was the
first use, though.

------
ZeljkoS
Interesting thing to note is that before Fahlman suggested ":-)" symbol,
Leonard Hamey suggested "{#}" (see 17-Sep-82 17:42 post). After that, someone
suggested "\\__/" (see 20-Sep-82 17:56 post). But only ":-)" gained
popularity.

It is funny to imagine how emoticons
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_emoticons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_emoticons))
would look today if one of alternative symbols was accepted?

~~~
gberger
I don't understand "{#}" and "\\__/". Are they supposed to be arbitrary
markers, or interpreted in some way?

~~~
c0achmcguirk
"{#}" was proposed because it looks like teeth showing. "\\_/" was proposed
because it looks like a smile.

~~~
david-given
I'm trying to visualise the first one, but the only thing which comes to mind
is Jaws from the old James Bond films.

[http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/jamesbond/images/8/86/Ja...](http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/jamesbond/images/8/86/Jaws_-
_Profile_\(2\).jpg)

------
kjhughes
I vividly remember having the following conversation with a fellow CMU
undergrad around this time:

Me: _What 's with all the :-) in the posts?_

Friend: _It indicates joking._

Me: _Why?_

Friend: _What 's it look like?_

Me: _A pinball plunger._

Friend: _Rotate 90 degrees._

Me: _Ohhhhhh._

:-)

~~~
p333347
I think this is one of those things that once you see you can never unsee. :-)

------
milesf
Ah bulletin boards :)

For years I have been searching for a copy of Blue Board
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Board_(software)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Board_\(software\))),
a popular BBS program in the Vancouver, BC, Canada area written by the late
Martin Sikes
[http://www.penmachine.com/martinsikes/](http://www.penmachine.com/martinsikes/)

I even talked with the owner of Sota Software, the publisher, but I never
heard anything back.

If anyone has a copy, PLEASE let me know! I've been wanting to setup a
memorial telnet Blue Board site for decades now.

------
hvass
This is gold:

"Since Scott's original proposal, many further symbols have been proposed
here:

(:-) for messages dealing with bicycle helmets @= for messages dealing with
nuclear war"

------
minivan
"o>-<|= for messages of interest to women"

I'm glad we are past that.

~~~
grenoire
I don't see it, anybody care to explain?

~~~
eli
It's a woman in a dress, like you might see on a bathroom door

------
xyzzy4
I'm sure :-) has been independently invented a million times.

~~~
oneeyedpigeon
Indeed, there is evidence of the kind of typographic play behind the 'smiley'
from as early as the 19th century:

[http://theday.co.uk/arts/internet-celebrates-thirty-years-
of...](http://theday.co.uk/arts/internet-celebrates-thirty-years-of-emoticons)

------
p333347
I see one Guy Steele in that thread. Is he _the_ Guy Steele? Glancing
wikipedia suggests he was asst prof at CMU around that time. Just curious.

~~~
jgw
Indeed it is - Fahlman worked with Steel et. al. on Common Lisp.

Other notable folks I recognized in the thread:

* Dave Touretzky - author of a well-regarded Lisp textbook in its day

* Masaru Tomita - the guy who invented the GLR parser

------
emmet
| I have a picture of ET holding a chainsaw in .press file format. The file
exists in /usr/wah/public/etchainsaw.press on the IUS.

:-)

~~~
nicky0
I don't get it

------
wmccullough
I love how different the conversations were on the internet then.

Now adays, if a thread came about to propose the ':-)', people would devolve
into a debate about the proper use of the parenthesis, and at least one user
would claim that '(-:' was a better choice, though it is the darkhorse option
for the community.

------
backtoyoujim
I wonder how many times the initial turn head, grok, smile -- mirroring back
to the pareidolia itself, has happened.

------
chiph
Interesting that there are both left-handed and right-handed smileys in the
thread. :-) (-:

------
yitchelle
Interestingly, before I read this post and the comments, I have always thought
that :-) means a smiling face. Ie, to convey a sense of a smile after writing
a message. Not a "I am joking" message.

Well, I learned something today.

~~~
halomru
At some point between 1982 and the late nineties ;) replaced :-) as the joke
indicator. But with modern WhatsApp rendering ;) as a suggestive grin instead
of a simple wink I imagine the current generation of teenagers has found a new
innocent joke marker.

~~~
WorldMaker
At least anecdotally, I've always seen/used :P much more that ;) for funny. ;)
has always been more flirty/suggestive, but that may be having spent more of
the 90s in MUDs/MUSHes with a greater sense of roleplay.

Definitely in modern emoji sets the tongue out emojis seem to be better
indicators of an intended sense of humor more than flirty/suggestive ones
(plus the combo ;P for intending flirty and funny).

------
soneca
And the proposal to have a separate channel to jokes is as old as the smiley.
There is always that guy.

Have anyone thought about creating a separate HN for jokes?

~~~
Crespyl
Well, there is /r/hackernews...

~~~
mfoy_
It's just a mirror of submissions... Actually kind of useful if you want to
search for a submission that you saw on HN a while ago.

~~~
retox
There's a pretty decent search field at the bottom of the page if you hadn't
noticed. Not sure how it compares to the reddit search mechanism though.

------
danvoell
I wonder at what point the nose was removed :)

~~~
throwanem
Mid- to late nineties, to the best of my recollection.

------
Imagenuity
Monday Sept 19th would've been the 34th "smilaversary".

------
dugluak
love birds

    
    
      (@> <@)
     ( _) (_ )
     /\     /\

~~~
glandium

      $ apt moo
                       (__) 
                       (oo) 
                 /------\/ 
                / |    ||   
               *  /\---/\ 
                  ~~   ~~   
      ..."Have you mooed today?"...

------
f_allwein
19-Sep-82 11:44, Scott E Fahlman invents the ':-)'.

Nice. :-)

~~~
anotheryou
did you mean that as a joke? or do you really think it's nice? <:-)

~~~
f_allwein
I think it's cool to see this more or less live in action, and in the original
context, yes (not sure what the emoji is for that). With many terms/
expressions, it's very unclear where they originated, so if this is indeed the
first usage, it is nice to see.

~~~
Finnucane
Probably the first time online. There are print antecedents to online
emoticons.

------
_audakel
"Read it sideways. " hahaha love this!

------
hammock
Reading these BBS always makes me think how much nerdier computer people were
back then than they are now. Or am I off base?

~~~
throwanem
There was a strong selection effect at the time.

------
pcunite
(｡◕‿◕｡)

I see you

------
david-given
I... now find myself morbidly curious as to whether you could use Unicode
diacritic abuse to draw actual pictures.

Pasted in example stolen from Glitchr, mainly to see how well HN renders them:

̝̞̟̠͇̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̊̋̌̍ ̎̏̐̑̒̚ ̕̚҉ ̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔ ̿̿̿̚̕̕̚̕̚͡
҉̵̞̟̠̖̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠͇̊̋̌̍̎ ̏̐̑̒̓̔̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̚̕̚҉ ̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔ ̿̿̿̚̕̕̚̕̚͡
҉̵̞̟̠̖̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠͇̊̋̌̍̎ ̏̐̑̒̓̔̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̚̕̚҉ ̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔
̠̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓ٴٴٴٴٴٴٴٴ -ٴٴٴٴٴٴه ٴٴٴٴٴٴٴٴٴ ٴٴ...

------
anjc
Wow that's interesting

(:

------
guessmyname
Here is a list of popular emoticons:
[https://textfac.es/](https://textfac.es/)

------
chalana
Usenet archives are also a treasure trove for this kind of things. Searching
old posts on Usenet feels like modern day archaeology

~~~
GFK_of_xmaspast
See in particular something like alt.fan.warlord

------
artursapek
This is creepy. I just opened a PR on GitHub and set the description to ":-)".
Then I opened HN and saw this.

