Odds are you use these every day. A staggering 82 percent of people use these in their online conversations. The most popular ones express happiness or flirting. They’re a great way to show people where the jokes are in your otherwise dry emails. They’re emoticons, and Neatorama has rounded up some incredibly fun facts about these ubiquitous Internet hieroglyphics.
While the first emoticons were invented way back in 1881 by the satirical magazine Puck, the true modern emoticons were first used by Carnegie Mellon University computer scientist Scott Fahlman in 1982, who used the smiley to differentiate jokes and serious posts on an early version of a message board. These days I don’t think the Internet could run without smiley faces!
As emoticons progress, you’re bound to see more marriages between them and popular memes, like the above image marrying emoticons and LOLcats. In the words of Master Shake from Aqua Teen Hunger Force, “ROTFL, IMHO! Colon slash parenthesis!”
Tags: emoticons, the history of the emoticon, smiley face, scott fahlman, origin of the emoticon, worlds oldest emoticon, electronic emotions, unusual facts