Slashdot Mirror
Culture Determines Which Emoticon You Use
Ant writes "A LiveScience story discusses the cultural differences in interpreting facial expressions. The article notes that where you come from plays a large role in what part of the human face you use to determine another person's mood. That also includes communicating online with the usages of smiley faces. 'For instance, in Japan, people tend to look to the eyes for emotional cues, whereas Americans tend to look to the mouth, says researcher Masaki Yuki, a behavioral scientist at Hokkaido University in Japan ... In Japan, emoticons tend to emphasize the eyes, such as the happy face (^_^) and the sad face (;_;). "After seeing the difference between American and Japanese emoticons, it dawned on me that the faces looked exactly like typical American and Japanese smiles," he said.'"
So what culture am I a part of if I want to strangle someone every time they use any kind of emoticon at all?
The slashdot culture ;)
Ask me about repetitive DNA
Is ^^, which I eventually came to realize is supposed to be two closed eyes with no mouth. Freakin myspace kids slap it up and down their page after every sentance. What the hell?
:P
Well, ain't it obvious? It's not like the Internet is some sort of global village or something...
Oh, wait...
Alas, if you think you saw emoticons, just google for Shift_JIS art, especially of the 2chan kind (there's some on en.wiki, but it's mostly the copy-pasted stuff). For what I know, that BBS is, and i quote, "f*****g huge". It's more than a subculture, but less than a culture of it's own. If i recall correctly, they've even written a book and have their Shift_JIS creatures roaming some japanese TV programs.
"We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams [...]."
Emoticons are replaced by little images that are supposed to look prettier.
But then you change the client and that new client has new images and your emoticons don't look pretty anymore.
It's like with fashion and anorexia and real people who prefer oldskool emoticons.
That's interesting, because when I use emoticons, I generally tend to use the eye-emphasising forms - ^_^, ^.^ or even ^^. In fact, I'm using the first of these considerably less often than the latter two, where the eyes are even more prominent and all other facial features are reduced to just a single dot (representing the nose, in my interpretation) or removed entirely.
:) and so on.
:-) pretty much exclusively and despised the dashless versions, but over time, I first shifted to the dashless versions, and then away from those as well and to the caret emoticons.
It also depends on the context, though; the less personal the context is, the more I tend away from these emoticons. In very formal contexts, I wouldn't use any at all, of course, but in the area between "all emoticons are frowned upon" and "100% personal" (Slashdot would be a good example), I tend more towards things like
Interestingly enough, for me at least, there's also been a definite change over time; back in my BBS/FidoNet days, I used dashed forms like
And I'm not even Japanese. (I'm not a US-American, either, of course, but I think that in terms of fundamental cultural issues like this, US-Americans in general are still close enough to us Europeans for the study to apply to us as well.)
butter the donkey
(.)(.)
./ reader and this one always puzzled me.
I am a regular
It would be instructive to consider the Internet's small but active flounder population, whose emoticons look like this:
Notice the distinctive adaptation to a 'flounder-like' way of percieving faces. Of course you may object that internet-using flounders are imaginary. As a matter of fact, that's an objection was raised even by many prominent flounders when the 'unicorn flounder' smiley was first circulated:
-..)
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
I can't believe this is "news".
gl hf no re kekeke -_-
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PGP Key ID 0xCB8FF658
I'm a young college-aged student, and I've definitely noticed a shift towards Japanese style emoticons like ^_^ from my peers. Even among those who use the "sideways" emoticons, certainly you would never see :-) -- the hyphen is considered superfluous, and a simple :) will do just fine.
:-) style smilies, which seems to really bug a lot of my friends.
Maybe I'm asocial, but because of this I've adopted the "retro"
#include ".signature"
You wanna see my japs eye winking at you???
"...the happy face (^_^) [...] it dawned on me that the faces looked exactly like typical [..] Japanese smiles,"
I've never seen a Japanese, or a human being bend his/her eyes in a triangle shape when smiling.
Could it possibly something else?
Japanese animes also show a character who's under stress having a huge cross attached right from his forehead, or suddenly disappearing eyeballs and long black dashes coming out of the characters face. Anyone seen that on an actual real human, or it just me.
Smilies are an art, and while the way they ended up looking depend heavily on the culture of the people producing them (Japanese smilies follow closely the anime drawing style), I think saying they are strictly modeled after actual people crying and smiling is just a bunch of wishful thinking. Check some photos, an Asian guy won't smile quite a lot differently than a European guy.
... can't stop now!
//misses his C64 ///with the BIG ol' 300 baud Vicmodem ///:D
I first saw an emoticon when I started using Quantum Link (AOL before it became AOL.) I was in a chat room and was confused because now and then someone would end their sentence with ":D"
Eventually I had to ask and someone wrote "look at it sideways."
Using a few basic emoticons has become as natural to me as regular punctuation marks, and just like regular punctuation when it is used responsibly it clarifies and enhances communication.
Rules 1 and 2, asshat. :P
It's easy to fake a smile. It's more difficult to fake happiness or amusement shown through the eyes. Some cultures recognise this.
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In the US, where you come from plays a large role in what part of the human face you use to determine another person's mood.
In Soviet Russia, the party determines you!
if you are an islamist, do you try to imagine a turban or kufi on the one you are trying "cyber" with?
@:-E
And your standard goatse: (EO3)
Finally an appropriate thread to ask this in. Could someone please explain why Russian smileys have no eyes, and typically multiple chins?
:)
I know this sounds stupid but I'm really curious. Thanks
After reading this thread all I can say is: Ouch! And here I thought that the use of :) on Puzzle Pirates had mostly to do with the fact that the graphic art of the game omits the characters' noses (and a big deal is made of that omission by Three Rings)!
Now I just feel old.
I think that emoticons are pretty important, because without them, this post would read like a student's essay on emoticons ^_^
Important link
This is so obviously wrong it's not even worth refuting. Here's a hint though: what and how people write is culturally biased. Did anyone, white, yellow, brown, or otherwise use either of ":-)" or "(^_^)" even once before the invention of Usenet? I'm going to go out on a limb here and answer this one for y'all: No. So, if that's the case, d'ya think there might be a slight chance that the spread of emoticons has more to do with "monkey see, monkey do" than it does with how them Oriental type is all emotionally different and such? Or maybe the reason them Japanese use the li'l squiggly characters is they got such good eyes.
>^_^< - Wolf or Fox
>:8) - Dragon
D: - Drama
--Won't that be grand? Computers and the programs will start thinking and the people will stop. - Dr. Walter Gibbs
German smiley?
>:-=(
Excuse me? Japanese smiilies tend to focus on the mouth more than the eyes. The ^_^ and similar emoticons are American used FAR more than Japanese used, since they have such a larger set of symbols they can make some much better emoticons.
If Slashdot didn't rape Japanese I would post a few.
I like muppets.
The goatse emoticon:
(=O=)
or what about
=(3OE)=
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
doing, it, wrong etc.
Another japanese classic, --> -.-' to signal social discomfort, or the teary face T-T for when you roll 1 on epics.
I never use the "Japanese style" emoticons, just the regular sideways ones. From choice, I won't give my smileys noses, instead preferring the :) form. But in some fonts (notably Arial), that results in a very flat and unnatural-looking face - so I use :-) just to make it look more "right".
When I was a kid, just a few years before the internet mainstreamed itself, a different breed of "emoticons" were common, but no one had thought of calling them that. Happy faces, hearts, XOXOXO, and this particular drawing of a cute floppy dog were everywhere. Rather than just writing "Good job!" on your homework, teachers would use a stamp or a sticker to say it.
:D XD X_X o_O; >_< *_* :P ; )
Obviously there's no need to write using punctuation marks on a piece of paper, but the basic motive of expressing emotion in writing has been there for a long time.
We really just copy the ones we see most often. I personally use both styles regularly. Plus ASCII hearts on boards that allow it. I used to be a bit into anime fandom, so maybe that's where it came from, but it's just another bit of vocabulary now.
: )
Ajax? Don't tell me this is part of Emoticons 2.0...
bomb the us up set someone
(.)(.)(.)
Slashdot: news for Apple. Stuff that Apple.
People have only just noticed this? I've noticed that for years.
Emoticons tend to fall into three classes. The first class is the sideways face emoticon, the kind where if you tilt your head to the left, you see a face. eg :-) or 8^\
The second (newer) class of emoticons is the Japanese style, which is a horizontal rendition of the face: O_O (^.^)
The third class is the abbreviation class, which uses abbreviations words, and pseudo html to convey the meaning. eg. ROFL [grin] </sarcasm>
BTW, ROFL means Rolling On Floor, Laughing.When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
There's those of us who've played too much Final Fantasy XI and have apparently become quite fluent in both systems. >.>
I, for the life of me, cannot understand, but in South Korea, the default icon used in IM is of a sad face :-(
I was quite shocked at its widespread usage at first, but then some one told me that it was the default setting. So I wonder if they're really depressed or if it is just a social norm where displaying a happy state would be held as "impolite" or "unwise"....
In Soviet Russia emoticons ,'/ you!
I've often been made fun of for my casual use of a backward smile. If you assume that ":)" is the norm, which often translates to a smile image on forums, instant messages, and email, then my use of "(:" is backwards. I've even been told to "get your backward butt to smiley school, fool" by a friend on IRC many, many years ago.
Is there a definitive direction for smiles? Not that it'll change my mind.
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
Well, hmm, if emoticons are supposed to represent what you're looking at, then that gives me an idea: there should be an introverted nerd emoticon representing a pair of shoes. I dunno how to draw that in ASCII, though.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
All I know is that the people who use graphical emoticons should all be rounded up and shot.
The ones who use animated graphical emoticons should be tortured first.
I see your :-) and raise you a 8^)
After the N+1st flamewar on USENET, it slowly penetrated my conservative neanderthal brain that emoticons might actually have valid use: indicating tone-of-voice. Email/postings (incl /.) are very abbreviated, telegraphic, and intentions can easily be misread. Flamewars often result between participants who fundamentally agree. Homor usually falls flat without much greater context. An emoticon alerts the reader of the tone intended.
So I have come to see emoticons as a second order punctuation. Punctuation separates ideas; emoticons indicate tone. Personally, I very rarely use anything other than :) to indicate [non obvious] humor, irony and sarcasm. I'm not sure where I would use anything else without being totally redundant. For this is a common error -- most people who use emoticons use them excessively, to indicate tone when there could be no other. That is almost as annoying as people who under-utilise emoticons :) [I might have been serious here, but I'm mildly sarcastic]
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"Posting on 2chan" would be no fun at all for most /. ers: it's in japanese. Native jp speakers probably go there instead of the US-centric 4chan. Wanna have fun with 2chan and cultural references? Learn their language and live temporarily in japan.
for some reason this freaks people out -> (:
in this age of communication i'm just not getting through
"There is no emoticon for what I am feeling."
- Comic Book Guy
t(^^) I'm doing is as hard as I can.
j'ai découvert une démonstration vraiment admirable (de ce théorème général) que cette si
erm. When people are talking about 2chan here they mean 2ch not 2chan (long story) - 4chan is a clone of 2chan (pic boards) not 2ch (text only). 2ch is read as "2chan" and 2chan read as "futaba"...
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
My personal favorite in internet discussions is
There is absolutely no better way to express sarcasm online, I love it |:)
B*===>
I was striked, the few times I've chatted with frenchmen (although I'm french), by how much they use emoticons, and mainly the sad and crying emoticons. That's pretty annoying actually.
You just got troll'd!
I find it to be the saddest emoticon ever: Q.Q
For another, text (especially postings), are one-to-many communications, and content again has to be adjusted.
Ubiquitity indeed loses meaning. But absence is the antithesis. Binary communications have occasionally been known to work!
Further, please note I do not rule out other emiticons, I just don't know which ambiguity they would resolve.
Homor usually falls flat without much greater context.
This is especially true when not all participants share the same cultural background. At least w/ an emoticon all readers know it IS a joke, even if it's not funny in their culture.
Emoticons are a natural extension to the old BBS convention of <grin>, <evil grin> and even <grynne> in some discussions.
Finally, XP is an emoticon ;)
I use this emoticon ;) much more than any other when writing humor. It shows a tongue-in-cheek sort of attitude or ribbing as far as I'm concerned.
How many fulltime jobs can one man have?