No Emoticons Allowed

[Kamite]

A random thread where we talk about our interest and chat to each other. Only exception no emoticons allow in this thread.

[monsi]

This looks fun and evil at the same time 'coz we won't know if someone's actually joking or being serious.

BRING IT ON, GUYZZZZ!!

[Stopwatch]

And here I thought bash had made this thread. And now I can't post the tongue thing to show this is supposed to be in a joke-ish form. Um.

[Iwamoto Yuri]

let's do- damn this is already hard why am I doing this...

[MoonRaven]

What's so hard in this then? Let's just stay serious and matter of fact and we'll fare just fine.

*deep silence*

(or not...)

[RoboG55]

Well then! This thread is very silent from the beginning. . .

[MoonRaven]

Of course it is. Everyone is too used to emoticons. We simply can't be serious about things.
(probably)

[RoboG55]

I didn't know if emoticons were allowed in the sig, so I took mine out.
I have a feeling this thread won't really become popular until we all start being serious. Which probably won't happen. I'm not always serious myself.

[MoonRaven]

Well, anything can happen really.

[kkslider5552000]

No emoticons. Kamite and MoonRaven only. Final Destination.

[RoboG55]

I'm quite used to talking with emoticons and actually use them in real life (It does cause problems). But I can do without them (with difficulty).

[kkslider5552000]

I'm quite used to talking with emoticons and actually use them in real life (It does cause problems).

"For some reason I get punched everytime I say "Ex Dee""

[Stopwatch]

Of course it is. Everyone is too used to emoticons. We simply can't be serious about things.
(probably)

It's not so much "serious" as that emoticons help get across the tone of what you're saying so not using them leaves more room for misunderstandings and is basically like talking to a robot in terms of what you get from the tone of the writing. As in, you only have the words, but are missing some of the necessary context to fully interpret them. I was going to say before about it being the equivalent of talking to someone on the phone because you're missing body language, but you can still hear tone through that so the robot works better, I suppose.

Anyway, to talk and ensure your meaning gets across without emoticons you have to be way more specific and add in more hints in what you're writing rather than using the shorthand of a smilie. No, maybe, an extension of punctuation works better? Hmm, "emoticons are an internet-based extension of punctuation used to help determine the tone of what someone is writing", perhaps?

[MoonRaven]

...what?

[Sunny88]

Indeed. When talking to someone irl, your body language makes up more than 50-70% of the communication, while the verbal part only manages to convey a very small percentage. Your words doesn't do much, as it all comes down to tone and body language in the end. (Of course these numbers changes depending on where you read up about these things, but they all agree overall).
I had Communication as a subject when I started as a hotel receptionist.. Cause well, it's bloody important to know how to interact with your guests! It was VERY interesting to hear and read about, and it does indeed make sense if you sit down and think about it. Hence it's not strange that emoticons are an important part of online/text based communication.

To be honest, I'm really bad at communicating by text without using emoticons, it is such an integrated part of me, that I really struggle when writing emails, as I reaaaallyyyy wan't to place that smiling emoticon to make sure nothing has been misunderstood.
- The same goes for when I'm reading various posts or messages online. CAPS! and dots "....", lot's and lots of dots after every post. I'm surprised that a lot of people don't get the message they are sending when using one of these two, if not both.
One of my friends who's like a bloody comedian when you are with him, always uses a ton of dots when posting things on facebook or community boards, and before meeting him for real, I thought he was just a negative person in general. Turns out he just likes to write a lot of dots for no particular reason, haha.

I'm very curious to see how this topic will turn out.