How many of you want to be able to express your feelings better? Now, just work with me here, teen readers. Can’t you all at least pretend that you have feelings for the sake of this study? No? All right, let me adapt my sales pitch.
How many of you want to be incredibly annoying to all adults and create a language that none of them will figure out? All of you? I thought so.
See, this is where the original idea for the cell-phone emoticon came from: adults would never figure it out, especially English teachers. “What’s that? A colon and then *gasp* an unclosed parenthesis? Detention!”
However, sadly, the adults eventually caught on. Now they know the basic smiley, frown, heart, etc. But what they don’t know is, they don’t know that I know that they don’t know that you know about this blog. This makes it the perfect place to add to the arsenal of text emoticons.
One of the problems with the emoticons is that they were just too darn easy to figure out. You’d send something like “hahahah:),” and the adults figured out that laugh=smile (something for which I give them great credit for). So I’ve set out to fix that, and win the text emoticon language back for teens everywhere.
(:^(!) I just got braces on-a new take on the old “:-#” sign for braces. Why Adults won’t figure it out: they will be of the opinion that the sign for braces should be (:^($$$$$$$$$$)
|:^| Default teen expression-used to signify that a joke bombed, or that you really don’t care that your friend’s sister’s hamster just kicked the can. Why Adults won’t figure it out: they’d assume we have facial expressions.
:V^->( The “I was going to send you a great emoticon, but I couldn’t choose the right nose.” Why adults won’t figure it out: Come on. Would you have?
>:@( I just broke my nose and I am in excruciating pain OR my nose created a twitter account that has more followers than mine. Why adults won’t figure it out: Adults, unlike teens, go to the hospital after breaking their nose, rather than texting some friends first.
(:^(<^^\ ) I’m so hungry I could eat a horse (or an odd-looking alien spaceship). Why adults won’t figure it out: the great frequency in which this will be used by teens (mostly boys) will lead to too much data for the adults.
(:_^( =$ I just sold my kidney to buy a new skateboard and now I wish I hadn’t. Why adults won’t figure it out: they haven’t yet learned of the massive organ trading that goes on in urban alleys (which, incidentally, is what happened to [insert Disney Pop-star here]’s brain).
I highly encourage that you use every one of these emoticons, because they are, to put it mildly, products of a stroke of genius.
Oh, yeah. There’s one other thing I wanted to mention: I also find people who use text emoticons too frequently, or in improper places (“Our condolences; signed Billy :( and Joan”) annoying.
What does this mean for you? It means I’ve included a 7th, bonus, and completely free-of-charge emoticon that can be used whenever incredibly annoyed: @#$!