Why does OSC use <grin> instead of the nice graphic - which is even shorter to type - smiley? In fact, come to think of it, I've never seen him use any smileys at all.
Posted by Storm Saxon (Member # 3101) on :
He's kicking it old school, yo.
Posted by TheSeeingHand (Member # 8349) on :
Who caresquestionmark
Sometimes I type like this for no reasonperiod
Posted by antichris (Member # 8785) on :
In the beginning was the command line...
Back in the day, there was only text.
As the Saxon says, OSC is showing his old skool cred.
Posted by Orson Scott Card (Member # 209) on :
Old school, yes ... before the Internet became available to ordinary civilians; before the web; before , before rofl, there were <grin> and <wince> and other such methods of showing intent. And since they are actual words, I prefer them. Besides, it's easy to overlook an emoticon.
However, for a brief period in posting here I would use the little menu of emoticons at the bottom of the form. But after using them a bit, I apparently forgot about them. So there ARE some posts of mine with symbols attached ... so I hope no one will waste time searching for them in order to say "See? He DID use them!"
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
*Points and laughs* Old-timer!
I don't see why you think it easy to overlook emoticons, though. They're coloured, they have little animations - they fairly leap out of the screen.
Posted by Icarus (Member # 3162) on :
Interesting. I am reasonably confident I was on the intenet before you were, or before practically anybody else on this forum. I don't remember people using *word* or <word> back in the day. I first noticed that after AOL chatrooms became popular. But back in the eighties we used to use :) and :( and ;) and even 8) all the time. (Note the lack of hyphens.)
Actually, because of that, I always appreciated that the smilies here didn't use hyphens. The hyphens only seemed to come in with AOL.
(I can appreciate your preference for actual words, though.)
Posted by Shan (Member # 4550) on :
Interesting, indeed.
Whe did CompuServe get rolling? In the 80s? I was just reading some stuff from one of their published author-mod's, and she was definitely using the <word> construct -
What I find even more amazing is that we could be writing the history of the internet, already. Does that strike anyone else as quite odd, when most of history actually took more than a generation to get to be history?
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote: I first noticed that after AOL chatrooms became popular.
It depended on the service. On Usenet, emoticons or parenthetical emotions in brackets were all the rage. On many BBSes, particularly ones that also hosted MUDs, you'd see things like *winces* or /em winces (for obvious reasons). (I remember that on at least two early services, typing something like /em winces would produce the line "<Tom Davidson winces.>", with brackets. I think it's very likely that the tradition sprung from that source.) It IS interesting to note that for practically as long as real-time Internet chat has existed, some extra-textual method of stating or visualizing an emotion has been used -- despite the fact that these are not common in letter-writing or email.
When IRC became huge, it managed to combine the emoticons of the Usenet crowd and the /em winces of the MUD crowd. And that whole newbie influx from AOL back in the day leapt full-bore into IRC and Usenet, which exposed them to those two methods of emoting -- and made them "mainstream" for the 'Net.
Posted by Swampjedi (Member # 7374) on :
Oh the good old BBS days. I was but a wee lad, but I loved dialing in to the local BBS and chatting.
I got in trouble for 'wardialing' when I was eight, though. Oops! <g>
Posted by El JT de Spang (Member # 7742) on :
You were on the internet in the eighties?!
No one was alive then!
Posted by Oobie Binoobie (Member # 8059) on :
I first encountered (and immediately understood) the emoticons, 'way back when the Internet was reaching the end of its innocent stage. That would be... 1991... when we were still using Gopher and Usenet allatime.
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
Tom, /em or /me?
Because at least in the past 5 years or so, it's been /me on IRC.
![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
smiley? In fact, come to think of it, I've never seen him use any smileys at all.
![[Wink]](wink.gif)
, before rofl, there were <grin> and <wince> and other such methods of showing intent. And since they are actual words, I prefer them. Besides, it's easy to overlook an emoticon.![[Razz]](tongue.gif)