#623. Believing in the magical power of the :)

If I had to guess, the inventor of the semi-colon is pretty angry right now. I don’t know who he or she is, I mean I suppose I could look it up on the Internets, but that feels way too close to me googling something grammar related and I swore in the seventh grade that would never happen. (I know, that was before the Internet even existed, but I was always a pretty intuitive lad. I had a gut feeling it was coming, you know?)

And do you know why the inventor of the semi-colon is so bothered right now, why he's jealous of the inventor of the colon, why he’s somewhere getting drunk with the lady who invented the ampersand and bemoaning his fortunes?

The smiley face emoticon.

Even though I predicted the Internet a decade before it blew up, even I didn’t see that thing coming. When you combine a colon, not a semi but just a regular colon, with a parenthesis, wild things happen. Magically a smile pops up. Look at it, :), it’s so powerful and tiny.

Big deal, right? There are a million emoticons, we even made a list of Christian emoticons. We all use them in some way. The chat system they put on our computers at work inexplicably has both a sheep and a soccer ball icon you can automatically insert in your corporate chat sessions should you find yourself in need of a “sheep soccer” reference. Who cares about the smiley face? It’s useless. Or is it? I’ve started to notice something lately, whenever someone tells me something difficult or borderline mean, they punctuate their thought with a smiley face.

That small smiley face absolves you of anything hateful or mean or gossipy in the email or text message or tweet you’ve just written. It’s the ultimate Christian get out of jail free card.

I dare say it’s the digital version of “bless her heart.”

We’ve covered that majestic phrase a million times on this site already (it’s what you say when you want to slam someone but not look like you’re in fact slamming someone). But lately I’ve really seen the :) making a strong showing.

Just the other day a pastor busted on me on Twitter and then threw out a smiley face at the end of his tweet. For the first part of the message I thought, “Ahh, that stinks, that dude doesn’t like me. I hate to read negative stuff about me. Why do I care so much about this stuff? I wish I wasn’t so insecure. Maybe this guy is right, maybe I am horrible.” And I started to get blue, but then I saw the smile at the end of his tweet. “Ohh wait, wait, wait. There’s a little smile at the end of the tweet. Phew, for a second I thought this guy didn’t like me, but those kidney punches at the beginning of his tweet were just to soften me up so that I could receive this hidden hug at the end.”

It’s uncanny really, and I fear the smile face is going to eventually replace my favorite “pretend I didn’t just say that” phrase. I’m of course talking about “I was only joking!”

That used to be my go to phrase to drop when I wanted to pretend what I really thought wasn’t what I really thought. I’d say something hurtful or maybe even confess something honest about what was going on in my own life and then I’d say, “Ahh just kidding. I was only joking.” I used to hide behind sarcasm like it was a quilt lovingly made during the moments before church starts.

The whole phrase worked pretty well until I saw this in Proverbs 26: 18-19:

"Like a madman shooting firebrands or deadly arrows is a man who deceives his neighbor and says, 'I was only joking!'"

Oh snap! The phrase “I was only joking” is in the Bible? Are you sure? The real Bible, not just the Message. I mean the message says a lot of things, that’s a Bible sure, but are you telling me, that the NIV puts the phrase “I was only joking” on blast?

I am, that’s what it says. And I don’t want to shoot deadly arrows. I don’t want to deceive my neighbor. I don’t want to be a madman. And I don’t want you be one either.

Let’s retire the :). Let’s put it in the same place we put our Ace of Bass CDs. (I agree, those were crazy, heady times, I loved “All that she wants is another baby” just as much as you, but we made the right decision. We did.) Let’s retire the digital “bless her heart.”

Let’s retire the : + ) = we can say whatever we want. Let’s give the inventor of the semi colon a reason to smile again. All he has right now is that stupid wink emoticon ;) thing. Let’s knock down the colon guy a few notches. We can do this. I know we can.

I saw the sign.

(I couldn’t help it. I tried to avoid a second ace of bass reference but I just couldn’t do it. I’ll be a better blogger next year. Promise.)

Has anyone ever smiley emoticoned you?