posted
A friend just IMed me, telling me, and I quote:
"Oh my god, some of these threads are frightening me with the overabundance of smilies Please help There's got to be a way to fight them."
And so there is.
Clearly, the unnamed woman -- let's call her "Jeni," for hypothetical purposes -- has turned to me for my leadership abilities. And thus, with those selfsame leadership abilities, I declare a ban on obnoxious emoticons. No more Gay Trains. No more Post-Apocalyptic Mutant Hugs. And, god help me, no "online hugs" like "(((Eddie)))."
We hate them. And by we, I mean the people. And by the people, I mean everyone who isn't you. Using these smilies is not clever, it's not sensitive, and a "hug" smilie (or, god help me, hug parenthesis) is NOT an actual hug and it's more than a little pathetic to use it as such.
If our demands are not carried through, we may be forced to go to extreme measures. Such as, yes, requesting that the Cards install new emoticons for every possible use. Mackillian's trademark --I--, for example, will change from the innocent, if freakish, letter it is today into a much more graphic hand gesture unfriendly to children and motorists. Icarus, or "Buns" as he prefers to be called, may demand a ( I ) emoticon, which would quickly destroy whatever "family-friendly" image this forum's been trying to preserve. Conservatives, while already well-represented by the emoticon, may very well demand a "paranoid" or "righteous" emoticon. Liberals will, of course, require more hugging emoticons, which will only cause a domino effect.
Myself, while I'm somewhat represented by the emoticon, will demand more graphic examples of round yellow heads getting it on, to the extent that minors will no longer be allowed to view this forum, and adults risk perversion of their inner child to visit it.
Clearly, something must be done. So from here on out, emoticons are allowed only once per three hundred words. If you have nothing to say but some obnoxious hugging or Dancing Seven-Up Spots emoticons, clearly, you have nothing to say.
And I just know someone -- Scott, probably -- is going to respond to this post with an (((Eddie))). No matter. We will have him executed once we're in power.
Posts: 3293 | Registered: Jul 2002
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posted
In case it hasn't been posted on the thread with 4 of them in the title, I must point out that (()) looks far more like a part of the female anatomy then a hug.
Posts: 5656 | Registered: Oct 1999
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posted
I have never had such an urge to use the hug smilie as now. (Please, please, please kill my roommates' cats so I can stop sneezing. Please. They mysteriously appeared while I was in Germany despite my having said many times before that I hate cats and am allergic to them. I refrain from kicking the bastards because my roommate is a blackbelt in tai kwon do and is one of few people I really think could kick my ass, but she won't know if I kill them through hugging people online.)
I hate cats. At least, I hate cats that live with me, and am indifferent to cats that live elsewhere.
Posts: 3801 | Registered: Jan 2000
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posted
I believe that the "new" smilies are decreasing the quality of the boards.
In particular, they KILL The Funny. While the LOTR Cheerleaders and Hug Dispensers* may not understand the importance of that, if The Funny is gone, so will be a very large portion of Hatrack's charm.
(*not those who do or have hugged, but those who's primary purpose is to dispense names surrounded by parentheses.)
Lalo - I got your back, yo.
Posts: 7600 | Registered: Jan 2001
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posted
Not only do they kill The Funny (which I agree that they do), they're also just flat out distracting. I can't read when there's a bunch of multicolored guys waving and jumping around the page. Trying gives me a headache.
Maybe I'm just turning into an old curmudgeon.
Posts: 4292 | Registered: Jan 2001
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posted
I hope the mod smites you all. Before the smilies, there was wailing and gnashing of teeth because the board was without them. Now that they're here, there is much wailing and gnashing of teeth.
All of this talk about smilies doesn't address the really important question, anyways, which is, when will we get to have massive .gif/jpeg sigs or little avatars under our names?
Posts: 13123 | Registered: Feb 2002
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posted
I used 8 frickin' smilies and the damned cats still seem to be alive. I feel ripped off, Eddie. Come kill my roommates' cats.
Posts: 3801 | Registered: Jan 2000
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posted
Smilies! Give me smilies and nothing but! A dancing dot I can't shut, If it's uncut, and unsubt-le.
I've never quibbled If it wriggled, I would be gleeful when others merely giggled. As the judge remarked the day that he acquitted my Aunt Hortense, "To be a smilie It must be ut-terly without redeeming social importance."
Hug-ging smilies I adore! Laughing, dancing, perhaps a snore, I like them more When they kiss the floor.
(Bring on the s, s, s, s, s, stained-glass windows, tattoos, anything! More, more, I'm still not satisfied!)
quote: I hope the mod smites you all. Before the smilies, there was wailing and gnashing of teeth because the board was without them. Now that they're here, there is much wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Stormy, it's not the fact that they're smilies. It's that they're so IN YOUR FACE.
I like this little guy: He's kind of cute. But that's because you can only use him in just so many instances, and so he retains his cuteness.
People overuse the colorful ones because... hell, I don't know why they do it. But it does take away from The Funny, which is a bleedin' crime.
EruWhatever - Be a sport and please don't overuse . He's one of the few that doesn't kill The Funny.
Posts: 7600 | Registered: Jan 2001
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posted
Look Ophelia, you're just going to have to matters into your own hands. You're allergic to cat hair? Then shave the yowling critters. Or set them on fire. You have to be more proactive.
Posts: 3243 | Registered: Apr 2002
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posted
Different smiles would be okay if any of them fit with the overall theme. Color, sizing, shading and highlighting are all completely different for each smiley. It's annoying. The new smiles just crowd the page and breakup otherwise legible posts.
Posts: 4753 | Registered: May 2002
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posted
You know, in looking over the threads, it's clear that the smilies aren't the problem, it's those DAMN kids! I would say that most of the smilies are being used by the under 18 crowd.
Look, kids. We older folks understand you're full of vim and vigor and bouncing off the wall with your suppressed sexual longings. That's cool. We've been there. But look. There are better ways of working this out than burning out our eyeballs with 24 watt smilies.
Ease back on the smilies, yo.(<---Use of 'in terms' to mark me as a person 'down' with the young crowd.) Go into the bathroom and take care of business. Go jog. Put certain poster's e-mail addresses on romantic mailing lists. They'll appreciate the extra mail, I swear. But for the love of Bob, you gots to quit posting so many verdamnt smilies in one post. There are other keys besides the colon and the parentheses. Live a little.
Posts: 13123 | Registered: Feb 2002
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posted
Ain't the use. It's the overuse and misuse. And parenthehugs are still better than aka's pointy-elbow ones.
Posts: 6213 | Registered: May 2001
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quote: Look Ophelia, you're just going to have to matters into your own hands. You're allergic to cat hair? Then shave the yowling critters. Or set them on fire. You have to be more proactive.
Yeah, see, that's the part where my roommates kill me. Well, the one who actually got them might be amused if I set them on fire, but the other one, who seems to care a lot more about them than their real owner (and who is already giving me the silent treatment because I told her I hate Thanksgiving), would kill me.
Posts: 3801 | Registered: Jan 2000
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posted
That Stormie's got balls. The proverbial kind. As well as, y'know. Look, the point is that I agree.
Posts: 3243 | Registered: Apr 2002
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posted
I'd also like to say that the eight-smiley limit is kind of pointless when there's eight smileyes to every freaking smiley.
Posts: 4753 | Registered: May 2002
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posted
Sorry, Ophelia, you gotta read the fine print. I don't kill your cats -- I'm no monster. God, however, having already practiced on Egyptian children, is ready and willing to slaughter an innocent, fuzzy animal with each emoticon you create. Expect Jesus to break down your door any time now and Uzi the allergy-creating mother****ers back to the Stone Age. Or whenever it was that cats used primitive tools to create new technology.
I hope you're this much closer to understanding why I'm an agnostic, now...
Posts: 3293 | Registered: Jul 2002
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posted
The only smiley I heartily dissaprove of are the devil smileys.
It's too easy to claim Evil. Before, you had to work for the Evil. Celia made the smiley into Pure Evil, and that took dedication and work. It was beautiful.
Now, every poster out there thinks they can claim Evil just with a mouse-click. Note to abusers: Wearing clothes with the Porsche logo does NOT make people think you own a Porsche.
posted
Eddie, you're partially right, but when God kills a kittie, we don't get to choose which kittie gets killed. God chooses which kittie in his own time and for his own reasons, some of which we can't hope to understand.
It's kind of like that spot reduction myth. You can burn calories doing situps and leg lifts all day, but it might not get rid of your love handle. It might get rid of that extra chin roll you've got, though.
Posts: 4625 | Registered: Jul 2002
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posted
You know how if you delete your own thread-starting post, you delete the whole thread?
How about if, in a similar vein, checking on "Disable Graemlins in this post" in the very first post in a thread disabled them for the entire thread? That way, people who don't like graemlins could at least keep them out of their own threads.
I'm not saying it really could or should be done, but I'm more curious on a theoretical level to know if this would make people happy.
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![[Monkeys]](graemlins/monkeys.gif)
emoticon, may very well demand a "paranoid" or "righteous" emoticon. Liberals will, of course, require more hugging emoticons, which will only cause a domino effect.![[Kiss]](graemlins/kiss.gif)
emoticon, will demand more graphic examples of round yellow heads getting it on, to the extent that minors will no longer be allowed to view this forum, and adults risk perversion of their inner child to visit it.
![[The Wave]](graemlins/thewave.gif)
![[Party]](graemlins/party.gif)
![[Group Hug]](graemlins/grouphug.gif)
![[Hat]](graemlins/hat.gif)
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
![[Cool]](cool.gif)
![[Evil Laugh]](graemlins/evillaugh.gif)
![[Hail]](graemlins/hail.gif)
![[Wall Bash]](graemlins/wallbash.gif)
![[Wave]](graemlins/wave.gif)
![[ROFL]](graemlins/rofl.gif)
![[Eek!]](eek.gif)
mean ![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
have to ![[Wink]](wink.gif)
pay to ![[Taunt]](graemlins/taunt.gif)
have my cat neutered ![[Confused]](confused.gif)
???![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
![[Evil]](graemlins/evil.gif)
s, ![[Laugh]](graemlins/laugh.gif)
s, ![[Blushing]](graemlins/blushing.gif)
s, ![[Grumble]](graemlins/grumble.gif)
s,![[Mad]](mad.gif)
