Smilies or no?

[Quatrina]

I don't put them in the same category myself. They're not as obnoxious to me as needlessly shortened words, it's not like they're something you need to wrack your brain to decipher, and they are a good way to show emotion I think. I would rather see "XD" than "lol" any day, and I honestly probably use that one too much myself. But oh well.

That said, I generally hate graphical smilies. The ones on gaia are alright, they're pretty simple and tasteful, but when I was using aim...6? I was pretty much going crazy because they took away the option to turn the damn graphical smilies off. I managed to go find some less horrifying ones that showed when I used them, but I couldn't very well ask all my friends to go to the trouble to go change theirs as well. I'm pretty sure some of them are on an older version of aim, in which turning them off completely was still an option.  

[Marytanna]

Do not use similes much, but i know it is accepted most of the time on the chats.  

[Wiianddsfan]

Smileies are not text talk. Smilies show emotion because the other person cannot see you. ( Unless you have a webcam. )
Text talk is for lazy people! It shows no emotion, it shows " I'm lazy" or " I don't know how to spell this."
Smilies are totally acceptable.  

[Thundurr]

I use them all the time.
|:

Except I do them backwards, since I hate most of the premade images used to symbolise them.
It's a habit now.

They definately aren't text talk.  

[Critical Cookies]

I use them a lot, but I don't use the smilies provided by gaia. They're definitely not "txt talk."  

[Henneth Annun]

I use them. I believe that they can be crucial to understanding the tone of what someone's trying to get across to you. Tone is very important, and hard to get across on the internet. Sometimes, bold and italics just don't work.

smile  

[MyOwnBestCritic]

Ugh, the pre-made Gaia smilies... I really don't like the look of them, since it ruins the continuity of the text (which is why I appreciate grammar in the first place). The yellow (or pink, or green) isn't as sightly to me as a text-based emoticon, such as " =D " or " >.0 ".  

[Fyre in teh Hoal]

I LOVE emoticons.

They just give this whole new mood to the text. I LOVE the 3nodding emoticon. I think that it's so much fun.  

[Master Akhekhu Crocell]

I'll only use text-based smilies like "^_^" and only at the end of a post. I hate seeing emoticons/smilies spammed in the middle of messages. In my opinion, it looks terrible and causes the poster to look as though they're in middle school. If there's only a few or they're at the end of the post, it doesn't bother me.

 

[Sachiko13]

I consider them to be a modified form of txt tlk, as they are a way of shortening your emotions into a couple symbols. However, they are not quite as annoying. Overuse is infuriating, but a couple here and there doesn't bother me. I'll admit to having participated in threads where, out of boredom and a lack of anything better to do, people made whole posts of emoticons. Mainly the domo one, back when we still had it, in the domo guild (shocker, huh?).  

[Ithaya]

Personally, I like text smileys, but for the most part hate the pre-made ones (except for the "ninja" emote on here).
Also, those big flashy glittery ones offend me to no end.

However, I feel the text ones, at least, make up for the lack of tone, pitch and expression online.

And I've made a habit out of using "=" or "x" where most people use ":", to avoid getting the premade ones.

P.S., Sorry for the excessive quote marks but my sentence looked strange littered with useless punctuation and letters.

 

[MyOwnBestCritic]

Ikonik Angel

Personally, I like text smileys, but for the most part hate the pre-made ones (except for the "ninja" emote on here).
Also, those big flashy glittery ones offend me to no end.

However, I feel the text ones, at least, make up for the lack of tone, pitch and expression online.

And I've made a habit out of using "=" or "x" where most people use ":", to avoid getting the premade ones.

P.S., Sorry for the excessive quote marks but my sentence looked strange littered with useless punctuation and letters.

Agreed.

Then again, pretty much anything big, flashy, and glittery is an eyesore. Don't even get me started on some of the horrors I've seen on MySpace. It's a toxic wasteland of glittery crap and animated smiley faces.

Smiley central is one of the biggest offenders, since it's malware in the first place. Plus, those smileys are gorram annoying. >.<  

[ImaginationRunningWild]

I'm sorry, I had to laugh when I saw MyOwnBestCritic's post that ended in "...gorram annoying." Watched Serenity lately? =p

Aha! Caught myself! I have found myself using smilies and whatnot a lot lately. I much prefer them to convey emotion, particularly when I'm teasing people. I definitely don't consider them "Txt tlk."  

[iesl]

Although I use smilies, I consider it "txt tlk".  

[Samaura]

I don't believe that it is text talk, you can get a point across to make an inflection that you can not do with your voice. The only other way to do this is to role play. An example of this *smiles happily* but it isn't as visually appealing as =D

As for my heart at the end of all my posts, it is just the way of my post style and has been since before people started to use the "fancy posts".

[size=11][color=violet] [/color][/size] :heart:

There is nothing wrong with it. heart