The Birth of the Emoticon

By Chloe Brussard

    Emotion is an important part of understanding. Understanding how someone is feeling, by their facial expressions, by the tone of their voice, by their body language. But how can you tell someone's emotion if you aren't with them? If your means of communicating with them is through text or email or even letter? The answer is you can't. Well, at least not anytime before September 17, 1982.

    On September 17, 1982, Dr. Scott Fahlman was communicating with some work colleagues on a discussion board. The conversation quickly turned humorous, and everyone wanted to put a thought of their own in there. The problem was, sometimes one of the members would be serious, but you couldn't tell because those messages sound monotone in the readers heads. 

    Some people suggested putting an asterisk (*) next to the messages that were supposed to be funny. But it was Dr. Fahlman who suggested putting :-) next to the messages that were funny and :-( that were the messages that were not jokes. And thus, the emoticon was born.

      I don't think that even Fahlman could have predicted the effect that the emoticon has on modern day technological communication. The fact that people can now include emotion in their online messaging is incredible. And now, so many new emojis have come out of the simple smiley and frowny emoticons. 

    Now, there is a difference between an emoticon and an an emoji. An emoticon is a face that is created with characters of a keyboard, like a semi colan, a parenthesis, a dash, etc. while an emoji is a face that a device has on it for you. Emoticon is a mix between the words emotion and icon. It allows for emotion to travel over the internet via icons. Some devices even automatically change an emoticon to an emoji, for example Apple. If you were to type in :), it would convert to this 😊. 

    There is a big change in meaning between the phrases "I am just soooooo glad that you are coming" and "I am just sooooo glad that you are coming 😁". The first phrase sounds sarcastic, with the excess of O's. And that tends to be the case with a lot of phrases that lack emoticons. Adding the emoticon is like adding your own personal emotion into the text, and it helps the receiver have a better understanding of what the sender is trying to say.

    It might not seem like much, adding a little face at the end of a message, but it can make all the difference in the world. If someone is having a bad day and they are looking for support from a friend, and they receive the message "Don't worry, you'll be fine" they could see that as being a harsh message, like their friend is telling them to get over it. But the message "Don't worry, you'll be fine :)" carries a whole new message. Those two characters at the end of the sentence show support, rather than a harshness like the first sentence did.

    Who could have possible seen the evolution the emoticons to emojis? I don't think that is what Fahlman expected his idea to turn into. There are now over 100 emojis that people use on a regular basis, like a laughing emoji, a throwing up emoji, a kissing emoji, a sad emoji, and so much more. There are animals, flags, athletes, buildings and food emojis too! 

    Although a seemingly irrelevant technological advance, imagine a world without emoticons. Dr. Fahlman unknowingly made an advancement in technology. How many people get to say they did that? It's not like he invented the internet or the radio, but that doesn't make his discovery any less of a wonder. Without them, emojis would not be a thing, and some meanings exchanged over text could be lost in translation.