8WAYRUN.com

Well then. Confuse me, why don'tya? :-)

Just turn your head sideways! Smileys are usually pretty easy to decipher/invent once you know how to interpret them. ^_^ ;->

Hope you buy the idea! $-)

I understand how they work, I just usually don't understand either what they're trying to depict or what that means. Face-to-face, someone sticking their tongue out at me is either smiling or not, allowing for context to the gesture. Online lacks that, and I don't know what :-p is trying to tell me, even if I get what it's supposed to look like.

Hmm. How is :-P different from <sticks tongue out>? Or ;-> different from <wink>?

When the action is written out, it's difficult to misunderstand what gesture the writer wants to accompany the text. Without the associated facial and body movements, I don't know if the act of sticking one's tongue out is intended to be playful or rude, and that ambiguity is often apparent when the action is written out, thus it's not often seen in text form.

Emoticons don't translate to actual expressions as well as many think, thus I'm often left wondering if the sign that accompanies the text is intended to give it a positive or negative connotation. ";->" for example, doesn't look like a wink to me as I've never seen someone contort their mouth to resemble the letter "v" while winking. I'd think that person was having a stroke if I saw that.

Eh. You're just overthinking things, I think. The > vs ) is just two different style variants on smiles. And obviously context is everything.

Variants in which one looks like the intended image and the other does not, at least in my eyes. I think an image that reads ambiguously distorts the message. It's not something I lie awake thinking about, but I do wonder what most emoticons are trying to tell me.

I may be mistaken, but I think I've met you at GenCon a couple of times. We spoke a bit when I was working Customer Service about the SCIV tournament that you placed in using Amy?

*laugh* If that's your memory, then it's almost entirely accurate (since, you know, I placed in the SCIV tournament using Amy)

I think I remember the conversation, actually -- cool! You making Gencon this year?

Indeed, I am the Team Captain for Customer Service, vampire shift (overnight). Yourself?