Hacker News Reader

Comment by ZeljkoS | Hacker News Reader

Interesting thing to note is that before Fahlman suggested ":-)" symbol, Leonard Hamey suggested "{#}" (see 17-Sep-82 17:42 post). After that, someone suggested "\__/" (see 20-Sep-82 17:56 post). But only ":-)" gained popularity.

It is funny to imagine how emoticons (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_emoticons) would look today if one of alternative symbols was accepted?

View on HN

Not only # \__/ and :-) were suggested but also '&', which the explanation on why is (to say at least) imaginative:

17-Sep-82 17:40 Keith Wright at CMU-10A *%&#$ Jokes! No, no, no! Surely everyone will agree that "&" is the funniest character on the keyboard. It looks funny (like a jolly fat man in convulsions of laughter). It sounds funny (say it loud and fast three times). I just know if I could get my nose into the vacuum of the CRT it would even smell funny!

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

would be interesting to know where that one started...

There is a whole parallel smiley history from Asia that either hasn't been documented as well as the western smileys or simply hasn't been translated.

The notable thing about asian smileys is that they have the same horizon as the text, whereas western smileys needs to be turned 90 degrees. Compare (^.^) with :-)

So given that ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ is both unicode and horizontal indicates that it is either from Asia or came to be after asian smileys became more prevalent in the west.

I done screwed up. I hope nobody saw...

>_>

<_<

>_<

(I always felt like finding some of these alt smilies increased expressiveness)

m =^_^= m

Interesting that Japanese smileys show emotion via the eyes while the American-born ones show emotion via the mouth, which mirrors the respective cultural norms.

> compare (^.^) with :-)

I have no mouth and I must smile

Probably Japan. ツ is a very common Japanese charterer pronounced "tsu".

As wodenokoto said there is a whole separate history of Asian smileys that are right way up, with the face in the middle and various decorations on both sides. They did have the advantage of a larger set of characters from the start.

One example predating computers is "henohenomoheji", a face made out of Japanese hiragana, used as a generic face in children's art and crafts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henohenomoheji

TIL it's a kaomoji :-)

Here's an article by a regular user of the emoticon http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/05/the-be...

And a wiki about those characters https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katakana

I am guessing, but I'd suspect one of the better known imageboards like 2Chan, 4Chan or Ylilauta.

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Of course, Fahlman is a Lisper, so of course he's going to use parens... ;)

I don't understand "{#}" and "\__/". Are they supposed to be arbitrary markers, or interpreted in some way?

{#} would be a grinning mouth with teeth showing, and \__/ is a smiling mouth.

Interestingly, I've seen \_/ used these days to refer to a dumpster.

I've seen \,,/ to refer to the "rock" hand gesture.

And \\//, to refer to LLAP

The second one could be interpreted as a smiling mouth.

I think.

"{#}" was proposed because it looks like teeth showing. "\_/" was proposed because it looks like a smile.

I'm trying to visualise the first one, but the only thing which comes to mind is Jaws from the old James Bond films.

http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/jamesbond/images/8/86/Ja...

That's why they didn't catch on.... not very intuitive.

I guess they might look a bit like the ones at the bottom under "Eastern".

Perhaps {#} would have evolved into Japanese-style emoticons like: (-_-) and (^.^)

If only we had a upside down '^' character, smaller than a 'v' though.

You mean like ⌣ U+2323?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com