In praise of the 'smiley face'

Last night I watched the latest episode in the (marvellous!) new series of 'Curb Your Enthusiasm', in which Larry admonishes his new girlfriend with something along the lines of "Stop texting smiley faces...it's like I'm having a conversation with a ten year-old"

I was immediately dismayed.  Because a) I like to think that Larry and I are kindred spirits in some sort of quirky, misanthropic way, and b) I use smiley faces all the time, in texts, e-mails and everything.  Almost as much as I like to smile in real life :)

And obviously, because I do it myself, I've never seen the use of smiley faces as annoying.  They just help to distinguish between a comment that's supposed to be funny or light-hearted, and one that isn't.  Because - hey - not everybody's as clever or funny as I am :D (see what I did there?  FYI that wasn't even a smiley face, that was a grinning face - reserved for the REALLY intended-to-be-face-smashingly-hilarious comments!).

I do draw the line though, you'll be pleased to hear.  The line is drawn neatly and precisely where the smiling stops and the "laughing out loud" begins.  I never, ever 'LOL'.  'LOL' conjures up a picture of a court jester jiggling the bells on his hat in a desperate attempt at being 'zany'...besides which 'LOL' just sounds deranged, particularly when people use it at the end of sentences that weren't even funny.  You can get into trouble with 'LOL' as well, like a distant friend of mine did when she added 'LOL' to the end of a message sent to her male boss, who thought it meant "lots of love".   There's no such confusion with a smiley; even if you added one to a sentence like "sorry to hear about your best friend dying" you could just say you were trying to add some brightness to a dark time (it's not an excuse I've tried, or would like to try, but still...it's an excuse!)

A particularly sarcastic friend once commented on how the use of smileys had been his saving grace on more than one occasion...he could get away with saying anything he liked, he said, as long as he put a little smiley face on the end of it.  There's something in that, especially speaking as somebody who has been described on more than one occasion as "quite a serious person".  I'm somebody who needs smileys if I want to keep my friends and general acquaintances.   Plus I only use Amish-style smileys; the bog-standard colon-and-a-bracket, not those awful animated ones you can download from the internet.  Which in my mind makes my use of them a little bit more justifiable, somehow.  

So in conclusion, I haven't quite been swept into the heaving maelstrom of message-smiliness.  I just dabble, that's all...so there's hope for me yet. 

But if I ever 'LOL', then I shall instruct somebody to shoot me immediately afterwards.

:)