Non-authorly Thread Alert! (Requesting Help Inside)

[McKenna]

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[minsue]

Woo Hoo! I knew you could do it.

As for the emoticons, hell, I don't know! Some of them are just complete & total habit, especially . I spend far too much time here and somehow I've reached the point that my fingers just automatically type that when I'm grinning. I've caught myself having to delete it when talking to co-workers on IM. (another auto type)

The basic ones, that I can just type quickly (and now type without even thinking about it) I mainly use because there is no tone of voice or facial expressions in the written posts, both of which I consider important in conversations. The , , are just another way to attempt to get the point across since the nuances of conversation are completely lacking here. As I said on another thread recently, if I write

Fuck you all!

That has an entirely different connotation that if I wrote

Fuck you all!

As for all of the bizarre & silly emoticons from the site I gave you, those I use because they're fun.

 

[shereads]

A topic that's near and dear, Mac.

When I first started posting and PMing here, I thought the emoticons were ridiculous. I learned the hard way that they're a necessary evil.

This medium, especially as a basis for friendships and other relationships, is going to give birth to new fields of psychiatry. Think about it: thousands of people whose sole or primary means of communication is words on a screen. Not words that have been carefully organized and edited, as they are when you submit a story, or when you go to the effort to write and mail a letter. Just words typed with no more thought than most of us give to what we'll say next in a phone conversation.

But a phone conversation provides clues to the other person's mood. You laugh when you call your friend a bitch, and she knows you're sharing a joke. Someone says she loves you, and you answer "you too," like a throwaway line, and you both know that you've hedged your bets.

Typing either of those things with no tone of voice or other clues to convey seriousness or the lack of it, can be misunderstood to the point of ending a friendship.

Unless I know I've edited the hell out of a PM and communicated with enough care to substitute for a smile, a laugh or a raised eyebrow, I use the daylights out of the emoticons. Accompanying everything with a grinny-face or a dancing banana sometimes feels as childish as it looks, but it beats having a friend think you've told her to f**k off.

Edited to add:

 

[McKenna]

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[McKenna]

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[shereads]

It depends on the topic and the mood of the "room." I'm careful when I write my posts in the roleplay stories. I edit to the point of obsession, sometimes even here.

Fast-moving threads can feel like IMing though, where people are typing faster than they think, posting one on top of the other. Those are usually full of typos, and sometimes thoughts that seemed clear at the time but aren't.

There's something ominously permanent about this format. Everything we say ends up in the damp sub-basement archives and can be searched and retrieved, right back to the earliest tentative un-lurk. No one else cares, but it makes me cringe sometimes when I realize that my first awkward roleplay posts are on a server someplace, waiting for me to win $50 million in the Lottery so that someone will have a reason to research my forays into porn.

Like Min says, "Now I can never run for office!"

 

[McKenna]

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[shereads]

Ack! So much for my ploy to take over the world...

You too? It's going to get crowded in the Invisible Space Bunker.

 

[minsue]

Thanks Min, I like how you said this: "The (emoticons) are just another way to attempt to get the point across since the nuances of conversation are completely lacking here."

I tend to use them to indicate I'm teasing or being slightly naughty or some other kind of emotion. (I wish Lit had a blushing emoticon!)


Another Question: A friend and I were discussing this earlier this evening... Have you ever found yourself using acronyms in real life? I have. I've caught myself saying "BRB" instead of "be right back." Yes, I am a dork.

I've yet to say any of the acronyms out loud (at least, I've yet to notice if I do), but I've come close to saying LOL out loud a disturbing number of times.

As for the blushing, here.

http://www.addis-welt.de/smilie/smilie/diverse/701.gif

 

[wildsweetone]

...a necessary evil...

Anyone who knows me knows I have a thing about s...

Online it can be extremely difficult to convey tone in messages. Sometimes in group situations eg the AH, the only way of conveying a 'joke' is by adding a smilie.

With the frequent users of bulletin boards and the availability of these boards -throughout the world- it is easy for a person from one culture, to misunderstand another.

There are times when it is not simply a 'necessary evil' but a downright necessity.

Using the emoticons can save one heck of a lot of heartache.

In my opinion, a person who has complete trust and open honesty with another person, can get away without using the emoticons.

Frankly, I try to use them even with people who know me well. It's become a habit and friends know when I'm not myself as the emoticons become less scattered amongst my words.

Hope that helps a little.

 

[neonlyte]

Never been a great user of smilies, but I always like to give a girl flowers!

I find I use smilies more with people I have grown to know behind the screen.

I am aware of just how easy it is to misunderstand the content of a post...
and type slower so I can read the words as they appear on the screen.

This a general observation, not a criticism of any individual poster.

NL

 

[snooper]

McK, If you are interested in the origins of emoticons, I have a paper on that. Email me (charmbrights@hotmail.com) and I'll send it you. It's too long to post or to PM.

 

[oggbashan]

It depends on the topic and the mood of the "room." I'm careful when I write my posts in the roleplay stories. I edit to the point of obsession, sometimes even here.

Fast-moving threads can feel like IMing though, where people are typing faster than they think, posting one on top of the other. Those are usually full of typos, and sometimes thoughts that seemed clear at the time but aren't.

There's something ominously permanent about this format. Everything we say ends up in the damp sub-basement archives and can be searched and retrieved, right back to the earliest tentative un-lurk. No one else cares, but it makes me cringe sometimes when I realize that my first awkward roleplay posts are on a server someplace, waiting for me to win $50 million in the Lottery so that someone will have a reason to research my forays into porn.

Like Min says, "Now I can never run for office!"

I don't think that I am an examplar of emoticon use.

I am aware, as Shereads says above, that there is permanancy in the words that seem so ephemeral.

Emoticons do have their uses but we must all remember that, whatever we intend to say when we write, all that the reader has to interpret what we mean is just the words, not the thoughts, the nuances, the raised eyebrow, the half-smile. Emoticons can attempt to convey that twist to the words but, if we can, it is better to be precise in the wording.

Despite your title it is an 'authorly' thread because we are all trying to communicate with words on a screen. Our use of words has to translate to readers who do not necessarily share our culture or our mind-set.

For example take the word 'constitution'. That means something very specific to a US citizen. A UK citizen probably thinks of the constitution of his club or society because the UK does not have a written constitution but every club that charges membership fees has.

There are books listing common concepts that most educated US citizens should understand. I had one but lent it (and never got it back). Who are "The Founding Fathers"? The DAR? What is a filibuster? What is the difference between "Ivy League" and other institutions? I know what I mean by those words, but many of my readers might not have the same images from those concepts.

Another example is Australian usage. "Eureka Stockade", "Ned Kelly", "Digger", "Gallipolli", "Breaker Morant", "ANZAC", "AIF" have almost mystical meanings to several generations of Australians but do not have the same meaning to an Australian born in the 1980s.

"Vietnam" means a lot to the adults of the 1960s. What does it mean to someone who became 18 this year? Probably as much as a 1960s adult thought of "The Pacific Theatre" - it's history.

I keep saying that all we know or understand about each other is the words and pictures on a screen, no more, no less. AVs need not be you. How do you know I am a large man who dresses as Henry VIII? You know because I tell you I am. Yet most people also believed me when I said I was Jeanne d'Artois and female. It is not easy to maintain another personality in real life yet it is frequently done on the net. We as authors do it whenever we create characters.

'Think twice, write once' is good advice here as anywhere else. Once written, you can tear up a letter. Once a post is written you can edit it to nothing, but how do you know that someone hasn't copied it first?

Og

 

[SnoopDog]

One thing I always find difficult and interesting with written communication over the net is 'irony', 'sarcasm' and 'joking'.
Because in conversations I use these very often but they don't transfer into written conversation very well. Of course there is the possibility of using emoticons or simply explaining it in brackets. But I have had some misunderstandings happen due to that problem.
So you might want to consider that in your work.

Snoopy

 

[Liar]

It depends quote alot on the ype of post wether I use emoticons, acronyms or not. If I do it right, take time to think of how I want to express myself, then the is never on my mind. A good slab of , or can easily be written into a post, if I set my mind to it.

But for the offhand flirting/yapping/bs, nothing beats that little yellow dot to say what I feel. Have you ever had an emoticon showdown? I heard the term just a few weeks ago. Apparently, it's when two peope get so far out in their banter that they only bounces emoticins back and forth for several lines, and still knew exactly what the other meant.

#L

 

[Liar]

Emoticon showdown...

Like this:

A:
B:
A:
B:
A:
B:
A:

#L

ps. It was much longer, but I had to compress the conversation because the system wouldn't let me post that many pics in the same post. Bleah.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

One thing I always find difficult and interesting with written communication over the net is 'irony', 'sarcasm' and 'joking'.
Because in conversations I use these very often but they don't transfer into written conversation very well. Of course there is the possibility of using emoticons or simply explaining it in brackets. But I have had some misunderstandings happen due to that problem.
So you might want to consider that in your work.

Snoopy

Exactly. Unless you use a smiley, someone's going to take your irony seriously no matter how absurd it is. I consider myself fairly quick on the uptake, but I went around for weeks thinking Gauche was a real jerk for some of his smiley-less sarcasm, and I'm sure I offended a lot of people before I gave in and started pasting smileys at the end. I guess it's because irony and sarcasm have such a gap between what they say literally and what they're intended to say.

Still, I'm very old school and I dislike smileys, especially the little faces that most sites use now instead of the crude old keyboard shortcuts. They make anything you write, no matter how serious, look like it was written by a twelve year-old. Besides, I need an emoticon that's somewhere between the shit-eating grin and the wink. Something like a nudging elbow or an urbane leer.

I've wondered if operating systems will ever come with instant voice-capability, where you'd just speak your message into a mike, and play back aural posts to threads instead of reading them. They could probably do that without much trouble. I have a feeling people don't want that though. Written speech has just the right blend of anonymity and openness, and gives you time to think somewhat about what you're saying before you commit it to the ether.

---dr.M.

 

[gauchecritic]

In RL I'm what's known as 'dry'. If I'm making a joke I do it with a straight face. As the years have gone on, on-line, I've found that I'm about as dry here as I am in the local. I rarely use smileys and have had to explain in PM to quite a number of people that they're being offended by something I've posted is wholly unintentional.

The thing that frustrates me the most about posting or PMing is the very necessary expansion in sentences in order to convey an inflection or even an insult.

Being able to underline, italicise or embolden helps in the reading but slows the thought processes whilst typing. (That's when I have to look at the keyboard)

This is a blush and is amongst those emoticons on the left when typing. Colon followed by lower case 'o'

I hate acronyms. AFAIK, IMHO are to me like typing U for you or M8 for mate (English use that for texting a lot). I can't actually think of very many on the AH (oops) that do use those and this goes back to having to expand sentences in order to get your point over, when in RL (damn) conversation an inflection can take the place of a whole explanatory sentence.

Here's a pretty neat story you can use for your paper if you'd like Mack.

Several years ago I was one of the founders of a "Trivia" Yahoo group. We arranged to meet in Leeds (nearest place for me) and there were about 6 of us altogether. The furthest that anyone of them traveled was from Eire (Southern Ireland) There was a Welsh guy, a Geordie and 2 Scousers. No one person lived more than 150 miles from another. We all spoke with individual accents and 'knew' each other quite well from on-line.

We recognised each other on meeting and with British diffidence made our hello's even though we knew quite intimate details about each other separately and together. We had each flirted outrageously with at least one of the others, more often most. We had no problems at all in understanding words on the screen in the "Trivia" quiz games and general chatter.

Yet for the first five minutes of conversation in that pub (and taking quite hard work for half an hour afterwards) not one of the other people could understand a single word I spoke.

I felt confident enough in my friendships and fellowships amongst them that I spoke in my normal quick and accented Yorkshire.

I discovered that almost all the meaning in my day to day speech was by inflection or facial expression.

This is pointed up by the fact that if delivering lines on stage or on the mic at the local my voice is different again from personal face to face conversation.

Gauche

Edited to add inclusion of Mab's post. You weren't wrong, I am a jerk.

 

[shereads]

Still, I'm very old school and I dislike smileys, especially the little faces that most sites use now instead of the crude old keyboard shortcuts. They make anything you write, no matter how serious, look like it was written by a twelve year-old. Besides, I need an emoticon that's somewhere between the shit-eating grin and the wink. Something like a nudging elbow or an urbane leer.

Urbane Leer, private eye.

Leer & Danger

 

[shereads]

Edited to add inclusion of Mab's post. You weren't wrong, I am a jerk.

Of course you are, dear, but you are a dry jerk and not a clueless jerk. It's different.

 

[Guest]

Hi Mack, good to see your beautiful eyes up close again. I don’t like acronyms but will use them at times. It’s that they look like words but aren’t, so as a writer and lover of words I find them personally distasteful is all.

For nuancing/whatever I still have to remind myself to use smilies, but when I’m ‘serious’ I try harder to merely use my language skill. I use smilies for fun and flirting easily, and actually wish there were more particular ones at times.

As you know, I like changing AVs often, whether of myself or other images, but I do think of them reflecting something of myself, vs. just being humourous (or lewd for this site). I said somewhere that I thought of AVs and sig and tag lines like bumper stickers or tee-shirts with slogans, that they’re a form of self-expression, an odd bit of self identity. I never had a bumper sticker, and resisted tee-shirt messages for a long time cos I thought they were juvenile, but finally good wit became available, haha.

In my one ‘serious’ online relationship, it took a long time for me to stop feeling hurt or offended once a week because I was not used to such a form of intercourse, plus the normal ‘getting to know’ someone. Even with a webcam (face-to-face meetings), ‘translating’ written messages was very foreign to me; he was foreign to me! It was work but worthwhile finally.

As for colors and fonts, I use colors only for celebratory messages, e.g., birthday greetings. I italicize, bold and underscore to denote or emphasize meaning, using them more in posts than in writing writing.

anon, Perdita

 

[McKenna]

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[shereads]

Dr. M makes an excellent point about the cartoonish quality of the smileys. Yes, they add necessary nuance when we aren't being careful about what we write. But it's humbling to sign something you've written with the 70's pop culture symbol for "Have a nice day!"

If only there were smileys that conveyed an urbane leer or expressed the idea of, "I am apologizing, but it is insincere," or "I'm not winking, I'm raising my eyebrow."

Mac, there's a phenomenon I've noticed at some of the live chat sites: there are some of us who pay for membership even after we realize that the only member benefit is the ability to upload an AV. Not sure what that says about us (not sure I want to know) but it does communicate that the ones who post using names only are less needy.

The site I'm thinking of (PM me if you want to take a look) also doesn't limit the physical size of AVs, and it's an education in human nature to see just how much AV is not quite enough for some of the posters. There are AVs so enormous, attached to font choices so big and using so many colors, that the entire chat room stops scrolling for as long as two minutes every time the person types a comment. There is an option of turning off AVs, but those of us who've been gullible enough to subsidize the free users by paying to have AVs just can't bring ourselves to turn off images.

emoticon for "make a note of this and keep it in wallet in case you're ever crouched in the corner in a strait jacket and unable to communicate" would go here, but instead I'll lhave to settle for

 

[McKenna]

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[oggbashan]

Og - Your wrote: "It is not easy to maintain another personality in real life yet it is frequently done on the net." Is your personality different here than in real life? Mine is, slightly. I am a bit more outgoing here. But I have noticed that some of my internet life bleeds into my everyday life; I've become more outgoing over the years, and less afraid to ask people questions or draw them into conversation.

I change my approach according to the thread. Just as people do in real life. If you are having a chat with friends over coffee you react and talk differently from a formal discussion at work. I talk to my brother in one way, to my wife in another, to my daughters either one way if I'm talking to all three or another way if I'm talking to one on her own. I could go on...

All these approaches are different facets of one personality. In real life I am much less prolix and sometimes shy except in formal situations. I can address a meeting; a conference; the City Council in session yet I'm less good at parties and social situations. I think before I speak - not good for repartee.

Og