Emoticons

Dude, the world doesn't become a more entertaining place it becomes a place where exception to what is said is taken more often and more time is required to repair the damage when the dreaded emoticon confers in a broad brush stroke way a way to ameliorate the damage to begin with.
No one is bastardising the language just bastardising the symbols around it to give what they say the unconscious meaning which we as visual/aural beings take for granted and which the written word doesn't legislate for. And back in the day when people used to correspond via the written word, they (hopefully) knew the person they were corresponding with so they knew what they were writing wouldn't be taken at face/written value, it was for private, rather than public consumption, so therefore more could bee said.
Words can convey everything that we need, but people on this forum aren't on here to show how literary or erudite they are with the written word, they want answers, they want jokes and they want rides.
You're railing against the dying of the light and it just makes you sound like a curmudgeon, there's worse things on the forum/life to get het up about.

Yeah it takes a bit more time to fashion a response that explains all that your trying to get across, and it is worthwhile trying, but why bother when the first person to respond does so in a jokey/less serious/utterly stupid fashion, because that is what this forum requires/demands/necessitates.

From my seat on the emoticon wall, you shouldn't be ranting about the excessive use of the lovely shorthand emotions, rather you should vent spleen at the current state of the forum, and how people need to think before they post, not just about what they are saying, but why they are saying it.

As a last bit, lots of people on here post, really enlightening, interesting, entertaining, thoughtful threads and responses, you just need to wade through a lot of dross to get to them.

That is all...

;-i

So the world becomes a more entertaining place due to the misunderstanding of words without aid of paralinguistics. I know what they're for but I find them abhorrent. Written word never required emoticons to be used in the creation of novels, letters, telegrams.

Why bastardise a language just because it's seen as in keeping with an internet ethic. Words can covey the same things as an emotive symbol, it just takes a little more effort. Though I suspect that effort is what most people lack, it's a reason that certain individuals will post any old shit just to get the post count up, quantity over quality.

Rather than trying to be the first to reposnd to something it'd be nice if every now and then people tried to scribe the most entertaining/useful/condescending/cutting/enlightening reply.