The Smiley Tyranny

I've been thinking about this a lot actually, and today on the bus back from work was one of these days when I had the chance to contemplate what I like to call the Smiley Tyranny. When did it start? I don't know, but it must be several years ago, that's for sure, and it is getting worse by the day. I am also a victim to this tyranny, I think many of my generation are. I try not to give in, but I don't always dare.

What am I talking about? The perceptive reader must know by now: I am of course talking about the trend, the tendency, the habit of putting smileys or winks or whatever you like to call them in all kinds of writings. We, the people, have become so stupid, or we think that others are so stupid, or easily offended, that ;-) or :-) or ;-P or ;-S or whatnot must be put in at the end of all kinds of sentences. If irony is used, be sure to place a ;-) after it, so that the recipient will not think you are being serious and thus be offended. And if you are wishing somebody a great day, make sure that you don't forget the :-) or the :-D at the end, since if you do forget, the recipient will surely not understand that this is a sincere wish on your part. And just to make sure that you don't come off as mad or angry or generally depressed, sprinkle your text with smiles and winks. That way you don't get the reaction that I got on MSN messenger once. I hijacked my (younger) brother's conversation with a girlfriend, pretending that I was my brother. Keeping up what I thought was a nice and friendly conversation, I got the following message: "Why are you so pissed?" Ouch - I had forgotten the smileys!

So be it with text messages and Internet chats, but must this Smiley Tyranny enter all kinds of spheres? My students surely believe that smileys can be a natural part of otherwise formal texts, but when the bank-person who signed for my mortgage starts using smileys in her correspondence with me, that is borderline weird, if you ask me. For goodness sake: I owe that bank more than 2 million NOK, and a ":-)" is not going to make me happier about that!

So, fellow bloggers (who am I kidding, this blog only has three readers, and one of them is me, but anyway): join me in resisting this tyranny! Let our words be enough! Let written texts be written texts, not emoticons with a few words in between. Let irony be left up to those reading our words to understand, and if they don't, let them just be left alone with their stupidity. Let us rise above the smiley tyranny, and let us not, ever again, give in to the temptation of modifying or fortifying our sentences by adding these pathetic symbols.