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http://www.startribune.com/stories/789/5466576.htmlfour rules for traveling the emoticon highway 1. Pick your spots: Smileys and frownies are fine for chats with friends, but best avoided with strangers. "If a smiley is sent to me from someone I would like smiling at me, that's good," messaged Mike Poskozim of Minneapolis. "If a smiley is sent from some jerk, I would resent the presumptuousness." In formal correspondence, don't even think about it. Using emoticons in electronic cover letters is "stepping over the line," says Monmouth University Prof. David Strohmetz. 2. Don't overdo it: Don't unleash a barrage of emoticons on a receiver who is less Netspeak-savvy than you are. It will only confuse them, and could raise concerns about your emotional state. "I sometimes wonder if perhaps the writer was needing some sort of a Prozac/Xanax cocktail," wrote Shannon Worden. Another reader, Joy Anderson, uses emoticons sparingly, and wonders when she does if they make her "come across as juvenile and annoyingly perky." 3. Don't ruin the joke: Like laugh tracks, smileys are enemies of satire. "It spoils the joke if you put on a smiley face," said emoticon inventor Scott Fahlman. "I prefer to leave people wondering." 4. You're still responsible: An emoticon at the end of an offensive or insulting remark "doesn't let you off the hook," said Fahlman. "If I say a woman's place is in front of the stove, I'm still in trouble. The smiley face doesn't help." Copyright 2005 Star Tribune.
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Quite true, tsuwm.
The only thing worse than the sardonic ambiguity of a smiley is the poisonous invective of a wild-eyed hysteric.
A pity the Carp never discipline their own.
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old hand
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A pity the Carp never discipline their own. Could you please explain this to an uninitiated layman like me? thanks in advance
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Carpal Tunnel
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--was it, that there are two advertisements at the bottom of the page to get "free smileys", I wonder?
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> explain this
carpathian, who has also posted under several other names, moss, grapho, etc., feels that those of us that have reached "carpal tunnel" rank, form some sort of clique that censors members.
formerly known as etaoin...
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Could you please explain this to an uninitiated layman like me? thanks in advance
wsieber:
Your question sounds sincere so I will treat it with the respect it appears to deserve.
Etaoin hasn't got it quite right.
I believe everyone who posts here is entitled to respect, whether they post as a newcomer or as an old-timer or as a Carpal Tunnel.
But I think we all know that in order to get respect we have to give respect.
Respecting someone else, including their opinion, has nothing to do with "liking" them, or approving of their opinion per se. It is simply an acknowledgement that this is a public forum and everyone should be treated equally here, with respect, so long as they treat others with respect.
Most old-timers, including Carpal Tunnels, understand this reciprocal respect equation perfectly, but a few Carpal Tunnels do not. In the past, I have described these Carpal overlords as "the olicarpy" or "the Carpal elite" or sometimes just "the Carp".
The "oligarchy", no more than 5 or 6 Carpal Tunnels, believe that they are free of the ordinary social contraints which apply to the rest of us. They believe they can use hate language and vulgarities and calumnies and diatribes, usually tag teaming with other Carpal elite, to intimidate and assail and drive off any individual who is not as deferential to their priviliged pretensions as they believe all posters ought to be.
The way in which other Carpal Tunnels, who are free of the insecurities and pretensions of the Carpal elite, become complicit is that they acquiesce in all of the abuses of the Carpal elite, however disgraceful those abuses may be. Although other non-offending Carpal Tunnels will, on occasion, urge the abusive Carpal elite, offscreen, never onscreen, to respect the rules of civility which apply to everyone else, the Carpal elite have always ignored those entreaties.
In this way, the Carpal elite has made the entire Board hostage to their olicarpic pretensions and despotic tirades and abuses.
I have extended an olive branch many times to the leading members of the Carpal elite, as anyone who remembers me as Plutarch knows very well. But the olicarpy has chosen to 'fight to the death', accepting no compromise or peace under any circumstances, even if their intransigence throws this Board into complete chaos.
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I'm as new as they come (and no other names), and have been treated with great civility and respect.
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And I see, Rainmaker, that you're no longer strange  , you're a newbie!
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That was my goal for today! I hated being strange!!
Now I have my eye on Journeyman!
And thanks for reading my other post - obviously rain = unwizened. I need to eat soon lest I get phthisic...
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> I'm as new as they come (and no other names), and have been treated with great civility and respect.
And so have said many people who have happily joined in over the years - good to have you here. :)
But hey, let's not let reality get in the way of a good fantasy, huh, when that's all that some sad cretin has to sustain his miserable excuse for a life!
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sad cretin
Thank you for providing such a colorful example of Carpal crassness.
Carps specialize in boorish, personal insults because they have neither the grounds nor the intellect to compose an intelligent reply.
Some newcomers may have thought my portrait of a raving Carp was somewhat overdrawn. You have convinced them otherwise.
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BTW a Carp's best defence is the 5th Amendment.  That would be a "Win Win" for everyone, especially for school teachers who sometimes invite their students to visit AWADtalk to observe intelligent discourse.
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Your endless drivel speaks volumes; no comment is required.
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Hey kids! Let's have a one-liner, put-down competition!!
(At least it would cut down on the amount of drivel.)
The Lone Haranguer
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no comment is required"No comment" is your best defence. In fairness to you, Maverick, I should acknowledge that in the "Carpal crassness" department you are junior achiever compared to some of your shrill Carpal role models. To newcomers who haven't yet seen the Carpal bilemeisters in full frenzy, stick around: "You ain't seen nuthin' yet."
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formerly known as etaoin...
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1. Pick your spots
2. Don't overdo it
3. Don't ruin the joke
4. You're still responsible
Very interesting tsuwm!
My general rule has been Don't use an emoticon in cyberspace if you wouldn't use it in written (pen,paper,ink) letter. This presupposes that the person doing the writing still uses real mail.
It is a rule I have broken from time to time and I thank you for the reminder - I must pull up my socks.
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wow, I was startled to find a response to this -- with this thread having been hijacked right from the get-go. emoticons certainly have become an overused symbology. the worst of it (IMHO) is folks laughing at their own jokes (harmless) and masking hurtful remarks by adding a smiley or a wink (not so harmless).
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oh, tsuwm. You know threads get hijacked (I prefer to call this phenomenon "rewoven") all the time. Are you dissassembling [sic]? Or do you just dislike chickadees?
[insert emoticon here]
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That'd be the pygmy owl warning cry.
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I think not, Faldage - remember Rog is an accomplished vocalist. If you listen carefully to the vocalization of the 5th and 6th 'dee', I believe he is cautioning us of a snake in the grass. As this was not elaborated in the article, the error is an easy one to make...
Of course, the entire science could be 'etaoin shrdlu'.
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That was my goal for today! I hated being strange!!
To paraphrase Jim Morrison: People are strange when you're a stranger. And they're even stranger when you get to know them.
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>>1. Pick your spots
2. Don't overdo it
3. Don't ruin the joke
4. You're still responsible
Good recap wow.
I'll use emoticons for emphasis every once in a while. For example, if somebody has made a joke and I think it was hilarious, I find a wide-smile emoticon says it all.
I find Number 4 to be the most important. How many times have we read a snarky remark with a smiley pasted at the end of it so that the writer could say, "I was only joking." It's the sign of an immature mind who does not stand behind his words.
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It's the sign of an immature mind who does not stand behind his words. Or the sign of a mind which prefers to say with a smile what some others prefer to say with discourtesy.
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I don't see the difference, plutarch. If someone slaps you with a smile on his face, it's still a slap. It's still discourtesy, even behind a mask.
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don't see the difference, plutarch
I don't see the difference either, belMarduk.
It all depends on who "slaps" first.
Perhaps we can both agree than anyone who slaps another person's face without provocation, whether with a derogatory remark or a sardonic smiley, is looking for trouble -- and too often they find it.
A slap is a slap.
Which reminds me, in all the old movies I ever saw depicting duels between Frenchman, they always started with one of the antagonists removing his glove and slapping the other's face with it.
The slap didn't hurt. It wasn't intended to hurt, not physically. It was the insult.
In days of old, men of honor would sooner risk death than turn the other cheek.
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Yup. That's true. It's kinda sad.
EDIT: I'm a little confused. When I answered your post plutarch there wasn't that whole part after "...and they too often find it" Maybe we were posting at the same time. The answer above refers to the first sentences.
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> In days of old, men of honor would sooner risk death than turn the other cheek.
days of old?
and look where that gets us...
<sadness>
formerly known as etaoin...
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Yes, I added the part about duels as an afterthought, belMarduk. We were talking about slaps and it reminded me of duels which were considered affairs of honor. BTW PBS made a film about "the most famous duel in American history", aptly titled "The Duel". The most famous duel in American history climaxed a longstanding conflict between two of the most important men in the country. Alexander Hamilton, an impoverished immigrant from the West Indies, rose to become a framer of the U.S. Constitution and the architect of America's political economy. Aaron Burr, grandson of the theologian Jonathan Edwards, served with distinction in the Revolutionary War and was nearly elected the nation's third president. In 1804 they met in a duelan honor match that changed the course of American history.http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/duel/filmmore/index.htmlIt is also news to me that Andrew Jackson, the 7th President of the United States, took a bullet in the chest in a duel, cooling killing his opponent while bleeding from the wound. His opponent was honor-bound to stand in place and receive Jackson's shot rather than run. From a Biography of Andrew Jackson: Jackson challenged Dickinson to a duel very much according to the customs of the time in the south. Dickinson, known as one of the best shots in Tennessee if not the best, had choice of weapons and chose pistols.
Dickinson fired the first shot, which broke two of Jackson's ribs and lodged two inches from his heart. Dickinson then had to stand at the mark as Jackson, clutching his chest, aimed slowly and shot him fatally.
Though acceptable by the code of the times, many people considered it a cold-blooded killing. http://odur.let.rug.nl/~usa/P/aj7/about/bio/duel.htm
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and look where that gets us... <sadness>
Agreed, etaoin.
It is sad that turning the other cheek typically accomplishes little nowadays.
Instead of setting an example for the offender, too often it simply emboldens the offender, resulting in more offences, rather than fewer.
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