I don’t mind them so much in IM, just like I don’t mind abbreviations and poor grammar and a severe lack of capitalization and punctuation in IM. IM is closer to a speech format than a written format, and as such is the perfect place for shortcuts and visual cues.
But smiley on blogs drive me nuts. Forums too. I always cut smileys off on those rare occasions in which I find myself posting on a forum. But I’m unable to do so on most blog software, much to my chagrin.
Still, I assumed, there were bastions of hope: Penny Arcade, for example. Ain’t no damn smileys there, nossir!
So I open the page today…
Tycho…how could you do this to me?!
Actually, thankfully, Tycho didn’t do this to me. It was an email sent to Tycho that did it. (And WTF is up with smileys in email? Honestly…) I’m sure Tycho included the smiley for completeness, or out of a sense of resigned irony.
Surely he didn’t think it was cool.
…right?