A few keystrokes became a universal symbol for the digital age.
In today’s hyper-connected world, no online conversation or chat would be complete without the ever-present emoji as an efficient shorthand for expressing one’s feelings or vibe.
But before there were emojis, there were emoticons – most notably the sideways smiley “:-)”.
The genesis of the “:-)” emoticon has largely been credited as the brainchild of Carnegie Mellon University computer scientist and professor Scott E. Fahlman. On his home page, Fahlman wrote that the idea to use simple keyboard characters to represent certain emotions came from the use of online bulletin boards at the time, which was during the early 1980s.
He explained that as some of the posts were intended to be humorous, problems began when a sarcastic remark was made and some readers did not get the joke. Then the offended party posted lengthy responses, leading to a heated discourse. Fahlman remembered how in at least one case, “a humorous remark was interpreted by someone as a serious safety warning”.
Fahlman said there was an idea to mark some posts with “joke markers” to suggest that the content shouldn’t not be taken seriously. Then, it occurred to him that the character sequence “:-)” would be “an elegant solution – one that could be handled by the ASCII-based (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) computer terminals of the day”.
So it was that on Sept 19, 1982, the first smiley emoticon was conceived. Fahlman also suggested the use of “:-(” to indicate that a post was to be taken seriously.
He said the symbol has also evolved to express anger or displeasure, adding that the usage of the emoticons he suggested also spread to other universities and research labs at the time.
The emoticon eventually paved the way for more visually expressive forms. By 1999, Japanese interface designer Shigetaka Kurita created the first set of emoji – yellow, round-faced characters with a range of expressions – that gave digital communication a new visual language.
Today, Internet users on social media platforms and messaging apps go even further, turning to GIFs for animation and “stickers” for more detailed and nuanced reactions.
Interestingly, Fahlman said he’s not a fan of the emoji. In a 2015 interview with Digiday, he said: “I don’t see any real creativity in making yellow circles with a smiley face. Then there were more of those, and they started looking like actual chefs and firemen and stupid things.”
He also said that he finds it annoying for emoticons to be automatically converted to emojis when he’s typing, describing them as “ugly”. He also admitted that perhaps his aversion is due to him having an “emotional attachment” to the original form.
In a post to celebrate the 25th birthday of the smiley emoticon in 2007, Carnegie Mellon University described Fahlman as a “proud papa” who never thought that his suggestion for joke markers would change the way we communicate in the online world. He said the smiley emoticon was just something he came up with in 10 minutes.
“Wherever the Internet has become a part of people’s daily lives, the smiley has soon followed. I sometimes wonder how many millions of people have typed these characters, and how many have turned their heads to one side to view a smiley, in the 25 years since this all started,” he said.
The emoticon that Fahlman conceived also holds the distinction as the “First Digital Emoticon” in the Guinness World Records.
In a 2022 post on Medium, Fahlman shared that Sept 19 is celebrated yearly as Smiley Day at Carnegie Mellon University, where souvenirs and cookies are handed out. He would host meet-and-greets and pose for selfies, often amusing new students who are surprised to learn he’s still alive.
Now 77, Fahlman has said he hopes to be remembered for more than just inventing the emoticon. He continues to work at Carnegie Mellon University, where his research focuses on artificial intelligence.
“Given a choice, I would rather be recognised for my contributions to AI research. But it’s fun to be a little bit famous for something and it certainly has been a fun ride,” he said in the Medium post.
