Emoticons and politics

I've never used a "smiley face" on my email till today. I was a "smiley face" virgin.

The truth is I never noticed the icon on the tool bar till this morning (embarrassing, huh). I just now clicked on it and it's pretty cool. Without so much as a word, I can show a variety of emotions --- okay, not nuanced emotions but the blunt instruments of amusement, delight, skepticism, and rage. Of course, I don't know who will take the "angry face" seriously when it comes in a silly little yellow circle. So I suppose that cuts the gamut down considerably to only fairly sanguine feelings: you can't do rage, just tongue-in-cheek rage.

The concept is thought-provoking. I can sit here blasé and jaded in all my contemptuous glory and let the little legion of faces be my front men. It's like politics in that regard. I can send messages and negate their literal meaning with a click of the finger: "You're so dumb. [Smiley face]."

That way I can have it both ways. If they take me literally, and put the worst possible construction on my meaning, it's their fault because I canceled it out with a smiley face; I'm clean. And it has the beauty of still getting my message across: "You're dumb." Or, "You're a liar." Yeah, more like politics all the time.