Emoticon addiction really nothing to :) about
By Beth Teitell
Boston Herald Columnist
Thursday, November 2, 2006
I was about to hit ‘‘send” on a routine e-mail to an acquaintance/potential new friend when I stopped in horror. Did I really just write that? Scanning my message, I started to gag. For starters, there was the smiley face after ‘‘It was fun seeing you the other day :).” Then there were - not one, but two - exclamation points wishing her an early ‘‘Happy Halloween!!” And, of course, the sign off, ‘‘All the best, Beth :).”
What’s wrong with me? I wondered in disgust. For years I’ve mocked such symbols, and now - as a victim of emoticon creep - they’re infecting every sentence I write. It’s as if a dark, overwhelming force makes me go through my e-mails and add all manner of obsequious communication aids before I hit send.
‘‘It’s like I’m writing for Hallmark,” I complained to a friend.
As a recipient of one too many overly cheerful e-mails, my friend grabbed the chance to unload: ‘‘I’ll tell you why you do it. It’s a crutch. If you were really thinking about what you were writing, or you were a better writer, you would be able to convey what you want to express without resorting to those little symbols.”
You know how sometimes it takes a seemingly trivial event to make you realize something about yourself? Well, after sending potentially hundreds if not thousands of emoticon-riddled e-mails, I finally saw my dependence for what it is: a pathological fear of offending people. As my friend pointed out, ‘‘the smiley face is the sign that says ‘Peace, brother. Please don’t take what I’m saying the wrong way’.”
‘‘John Kerry should use an emoticon and not speak,” she added.
She herself doesn’t use them. ‘‘I find the ones available are too limited to express myself visually. Smiley faces, frowny faces, occasionally a pirate smiley face, but I’m not sure what that means. I need an array of icons for the more melodramatically inclined.”
What I need, I realized, is a new e-personality, particularly since a friend, in response to a query, told me that when she receives a smiley face, she thinks, ‘‘I’d like to wipe that smile right off your virtual face.”
‘‘I’m not talking about you,” she added, but I got the message. It’s cold-turkey time. I’m swearing off them for good. And let me just say to anyone I’ve e-nnoyed in the past, please forgive me. :)
