This is exactly why smileys were born. But some people tend to be elitist and frown upon them. :)
Oh, and it blows to copy-and-paste code into one of those blasted chat programs... hateful things.
It's really weird, but in Hipchat, it always throws me off a little bit when I include an emoticon, but the resulting graphic conveys a slightly different connotation than I was expecting.
It's a generational thing tho. 馃榿 Try and find a college aged girl that doesn't use emojis. Only ones that don't are "conscientious objectors", and to most people in that age group and younger emoji are as ambient as air.
That may be due to the fact that the little smile at the end of a sentence can look really self-satisfied or fake.
Especially if you were to dismiss any complainers by calling them elitists, and afterward tack a smile on the end of the sentence. Here, I'm being nice too! :) :) :)
:?|
It makes me look stupid, so it can only be a sincere smile. Or maybe I'm just stupid... Well to be fair, we're discussing the psychology of smileys.
I have a theory about ":)", that people use it when there's a discrepancy between what they say and what they think, through the same mechanism of humor (which is also about discrepancies). And so in general, I don't trust people who use it strangely. But now, they're all going to use :3... We're doomed.
Wait, I mean :D
:P
:-)