WEBVTT - Smiley Face Emoji Story 0:00:04.440 --> 0:00:12.039 Texts of technology with tech Stuff from hastaff works dot com. 0:00:12.039 --> 0:00:15.240 Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I am your host, 0:00:15.440 --> 0:00:21.000 Jonathan Strickland, Senior writer or how stuff works dot com. 0:00:21.040 --> 0:00:24.400 And today I thought i'd cover a pair of related topics, 0:00:24.840 --> 0:00:29.080 things that many of us have had plenty of experience with, 0:00:29.360 --> 0:00:31.720 maybe don't know so much about when you get down 0:00:31.720 --> 0:00:35.680 to it, and those would be emoticons and emoji. Now, 0:00:35.720 --> 0:00:39.240 in case you are not aware, those are the little 0:00:39.320 --> 0:00:43.560 pictograms or pictures that we send through various digital messaging 0:00:43.640 --> 0:00:47.240 services and online social media in order to get certain 0:00:47.280 --> 0:00:52.639 meanings and emotional intent across to one another. There are 0:00:52.760 --> 0:00:56.400 lots of simple examples, such as the pairing of the 0:00:56.720 --> 0:01:02.600 colon punctuation and closed parentheses, which makes a sideways smiley face, 0:01:02.680 --> 0:01:05.039 though I should point out some cultures will flip this 0:01:05.120 --> 0:01:08.000 around and do an open parentheses and then a colon 0:01:08.319 --> 0:01:10.920 to be a smiley face which is flipped on the 0:01:10.920 --> 0:01:14.520 other side. But honestly, that's just playing madness when you 0:01:14.600 --> 0:01:17.640 get down to it. And there are more complicated versions, 0:01:17.720 --> 0:01:22.040 like the emoji that seemed to cover very specific moods 0:01:22.160 --> 0:01:26.280 or thoughts or concepts we humans have taken to communicating 0:01:26.280 --> 0:01:29.800 through these pictograms in ways beyond punctuating a short message. 0:01:29.840 --> 0:01:33.240 And I'm sure you've seen some messages that consist only 0:01:33.640 --> 0:01:36.640 of those pictograms, and it ends up being your job 0:01:36.720 --> 0:01:40.039 to kind of suss out what does that message actually mean. 0:01:40.600 --> 0:01:43.800 I've played that game recently myself, where everyone was using 0:01:44.040 --> 0:01:48.520 emoji to describe a movie, either by title or by 0:01:48.640 --> 0:01:51.760 the plot of the film, and then it was everyone 0:01:51.840 --> 0:01:56.160 else's job to guess what the film is. And it's 0:01:56.160 --> 0:01:58.960 a fun game to play. You think of a film 0:01:59.120 --> 0:02:02.360 that maybe is is pretty popular, like say Wizard of Oz, 0:02:02.680 --> 0:02:06.000 and then you try and describe it using only emoji, 0:02:06.080 --> 0:02:08.359 and it's everyone else's job to try and figure out 0:02:08.400 --> 0:02:10.720 what film are you talking about? And some of them 0:02:10.720 --> 0:02:13.800 are much easier than others. And again it depends on 0:02:13.840 --> 0:02:17.080 whether or not you're describing the movie or the movie's title, 0:02:17.160 --> 0:02:19.720 because sometimes the title of a film has very little 0:02:19.720 --> 0:02:23.440 to do with what actually happens in the movie. But 0:02:23.680 --> 0:02:26.200 these sort of games are becoming more and more commonplace. 0:02:26.280 --> 0:02:29.720 But where did the idea for emoticons and emoji even 0:02:29.760 --> 0:02:35.720 come from? Well, between the two, emoticons really predate emoji. 0:02:36.040 --> 0:02:39.640 They actually predate emoji by a couple of decades at 0:02:39.680 --> 0:02:42.760 least in the digital age. But obviously humans have been 0:02:42.880 --> 0:02:46.839 using pictures to communicate since prehistoric times. Now that goes 0:02:46.880 --> 0:02:49.280 well beyond the scope of this podcast. I know that 0:02:49.320 --> 0:02:51.720 I like to give the history of stuff, and often 0:02:51.760 --> 0:02:53.960 I would go way, way way back in order to 0:02:53.960 --> 0:02:56.800 start with the foundation. But even I am not going 0:02:56.840 --> 0:03:01.120 to go into talking about caves in ancient France that had, 0:03:02.240 --> 0:03:05.519 you know, prehistoric paintings on the walls. That that goes 0:03:05.560 --> 0:03:09.760 beyond even the scope of tech stuff. So perhaps we 0:03:09.840 --> 0:03:11.960 can get one of the other shows at some point 0:03:11.960 --> 0:03:14.400 to talk about the long history of using pictures as 0:03:14.400 --> 0:03:18.240 a form of communication, and I can just stick strictly 0:03:18.280 --> 0:03:24.160 to digital communication for the for the majority of this show. However, 0:03:24.400 --> 0:03:29.400 the emoticon itself doesn't date back to ancient times because 0:03:29.440 --> 0:03:32.720 processing power back then was pretty bad and it just 0:03:32.919 --> 0:03:35.000 you know, you couldn't even really get a bit together 0:03:35.120 --> 0:03:38.080 with the computers of the prehistoric age. However, there was 0:03:38.320 --> 0:03:42.280 some debate about when it first appeared, and and some 0:03:42.360 --> 0:03:46.280 people suggest that it first showed up in the seventeenth century, 0:03:46.400 --> 0:03:51.600 as in the sixteen hundreds. Now I know what you're thinking, Jonathan, 0:03:52.000 --> 0:03:56.480 You're saying frownie face. No one had a computer or 0:03:56.520 --> 0:03:59.320 a smartphone, or a tablet or a cell phone in 0:03:59.360 --> 0:04:05.280 the sixteen hundreds, extra angry face and You're right. But 0:04:05.840 --> 0:04:09.320 a twenty one century publicity manager for the University of 0:04:09.360 --> 0:04:13.920 Chicago Press named Levi Stall discovered what at first appeared 0:04:13.920 --> 0:04:18.960 to be an earlier intentional emoticon. Now Stall was perusing 0:04:19.000 --> 0:04:23.600 poetry written by Robert Herrick. Herrick was born in fifteen 0:04:23.760 --> 0:04:26.440 ninety one, and as a young man he became one 0:04:26.480 --> 0:04:30.680 of Ben Johnson's followers. He also took Holy orders in 0:04:30.760 --> 0:04:34.279 six three and became a cleric essentially, but he is 0:04:34.400 --> 0:04:37.800 chiefly known as a poet, with his most well known 0:04:37.880 --> 0:04:42.120 work being her Sperities, or the Works Both Human and 0:04:42.200 --> 0:04:46.120 Divine of Robert Herrick. One of his most famous poems 0:04:46.279 --> 0:04:49.320 is to the Virgins to make much of Time, which 0:04:49.360 --> 0:04:53.360 begins with the lines gather ye rosebuds, while ye may 0:04:53.800 --> 0:04:56.799 old time is still a flying and the same flower 0:04:56.800 --> 0:05:02.599 that smiles today tomorrow will be dying. Really cheerful stuff. 0:05:02.680 --> 0:05:07.360 But that's not the poem that specifically caught Levi stalls attention. 0:05:07.920 --> 0:05:10.960 The one that he was interested in was a poem 0:05:11.000 --> 0:05:14.080 titled to a fortune, and that was first published in 0:05:14.200 --> 0:05:20.320 sixty and the original publication actually contains the instance that 0:05:20.440 --> 0:05:24.560 Stall said this might be an early emoticon. The first 0:05:24.680 --> 0:05:27.760 two lines of that poem read as follows, tumble me 0:05:27.880 --> 0:05:31.480 down and I will sit upon my ruins smiling yet. 0:05:32.200 --> 0:05:37.960 But that smiling yet is a parenthetical. It is enclosed 0:05:38.000 --> 0:05:44.320 within parentheses. So upon my runs, smiling yet is in parentheses, 0:05:44.360 --> 0:05:48.440 and just before the final parentheses the closed parentheses is 0:05:48.440 --> 0:05:53.159 a colon, And so it looks like one of those 0:05:53.279 --> 0:05:57.120 little smiling emoticons that you would have seen in text 0:05:57.160 --> 0:06:02.800 messages for the last several years. Colon, closed parentheses, smiley 0:06:02.839 --> 0:06:08.960 face right. And as I mentioned, this was in the 0:06:09.040 --> 0:06:12.719 sixteen hundreds. So Stall's reaction was, hey, this might actually 0:06:12.720 --> 0:06:17.799 be a real instance of an emoticon, because the words 0:06:17.880 --> 0:06:25.000 immediately preceding the symbols are smiling yet. So maybe this 0:06:25.080 --> 0:06:29.120 is really a clever use of typography where the author 0:06:29.279 --> 0:06:34.039 was intentionally including the colon and the closed parentheses to 0:06:34.200 --> 0:06:38.960 indicate a smile following the words smiling yet. So this 0:06:39.000 --> 0:06:42.640 could be a very clever show of humor. However, that 0:06:42.680 --> 0:06:48.120 particular interpretation has been disputed by many scholars who point 0:06:48.160 --> 0:06:51.400 out that not only were there other instances of the 0:06:51.520 --> 0:06:56.719 colon parentheses throughout his works that had nothing to do 0:06:56.800 --> 0:06:59.360 with smiling, like they were paired with words that had 0:06:59.480 --> 0:07:05.279 no connection to the concept of smiling, but also punctuation 0:07:05.360 --> 0:07:08.119 in the seventeenth century had not really reached the level 0:07:08.240 --> 0:07:13.480 of guidelines yet. It was pretty chaotic, it was sporadic, 0:07:14.000 --> 0:07:16.560 No one had really standardized it, so it's more likely 0:07:17.040 --> 0:07:20.600 this was not an example of any sort of meaningful 0:07:20.760 --> 0:07:24.880 expression or some sort of visual joke on top of 0:07:24.920 --> 0:07:28.920 the layer of poetry. In fact, there are plenty of 0:07:28.960 --> 0:07:33.240 examples of writers from the seventeenth century using unnecessary punctuation 0:07:33.320 --> 0:07:36.760 before closing out of parentheses. There are other examples of 0:07:36.800 --> 0:07:40.400 odd punctuation that met no accepted standard that arose during 0:07:40.400 --> 0:07:43.680 the same time period, such as a comma and a dash. 0:07:43.880 --> 0:07:46.000 There was no need for a dash after a comma, 0:07:46.040 --> 0:07:48.040 but there were a lot of writers who were including 0:07:48.080 --> 0:07:52.360 this because there had not been a widely adopted standard 0:07:52.400 --> 0:07:55.360 in place. So it appears this smiley face was more 0:07:55.400 --> 0:07:58.680 of a coincidence and not actually a sly jest. And 0:07:58.720 --> 0:08:02.360 there's actually another example that predates Herrick's poem by a 0:08:02.360 --> 0:08:04.720 few years and this would be the first example of 0:08:04.760 --> 0:08:09.120 an emoji, not an emoticon. A seventeenth century notary in 0:08:09.160 --> 0:08:12.280 Slovakia apparently used a little drawing of a face kind 0:08:12.320 --> 0:08:15.920 of similar to a smiley face, although the mouth did 0:08:15.960 --> 0:08:18.920 not have a big curve to it, so it's not 0:08:18.960 --> 0:08:21.920 like a big smile. It was more like a circle 0:08:22.520 --> 0:08:25.360 like your traditional smiley face, two dots for eyes, and 0:08:25.400 --> 0:08:30.160 a little line that perhaps was a slight smile, but 0:08:30.240 --> 0:08:35.000 not an exaggerated one. The notary in question was yawn 0:08:35.160 --> 0:08:39.480 a lot of slides, and honestly, i'd probably just refer 0:08:39.559 --> 0:08:43.360 to this as a little smiley face, not even an emoji, 0:08:43.559 --> 0:08:46.400 except for the fact that this was apparently to indicate 0:08:47.000 --> 0:08:50.760 that the form he was notarizing met with his approval. 0:08:51.559 --> 0:08:54.640 So it wasn't that he was just notarizing this form, 0:08:54.679 --> 0:08:58.440 which was a town document for a little town in Slovakia, 0:08:58.760 --> 0:09:01.520 but that he was also saying, I approve of this. 0:09:01.720 --> 0:09:04.880 I'm not just notarizing it. I approve of it. And 0:09:05.000 --> 0:09:08.439 in that case it was fulfilling a function that emoji's 0:09:08.600 --> 0:09:11.840 many centuries later would continue to fulfill. So you could 0:09:12.559 --> 0:09:17.680 argue that perhaps this instant in early sixteen hundreds was 0:09:17.760 --> 0:09:22.120 the first use of an emoji. But if Herrick's poetry 0:09:22.360 --> 0:09:25.640 or Slovakian document wasn't really the origin of the emoticon, 0:09:26.040 --> 0:09:29.280 what was What could have been a speech from the 0:09:29.360 --> 0:09:34.800 sixteenth President of the United States back in eighteen sixty two. Again, 0:09:34.840 --> 0:09:37.560 that's what someone thought might be possible. They were looking 0:09:37.559 --> 0:09:41.480 at a transcript of one of Abraham Lincoln's speeches, and 0:09:41.520 --> 0:09:45.280 the passage from that speech reads like this, fellow citizens, 0:09:45.600 --> 0:09:48.640 I believe there is no precedent for my appearing before 0:09:48.679 --> 0:09:54.800 you on this occasion. Open bracket, applause, closed bracket. But 0:09:54.920 --> 0:09:57.640 it is also true that there is no precedent for 0:09:57.800 --> 0:10:02.040 you being here yourselves a open parentheses, applause and laughter, 0:10:02.559 --> 0:10:08.160 semi colon closed parentheses, and I offer in justification, and 0:10:08.240 --> 0:10:11.400 so on. The speech goes on. But that semi colon 0:10:11.600 --> 0:10:15.240 closed parentheses pairing looks like a winky face what we 0:10:15.280 --> 0:10:20.520 would usually use as a hey, do you get it? Wink? Well? 0:10:21.640 --> 0:10:24.480 Could that be the intent? I mean, the phrase that 0:10:24.520 --> 0:10:29.040 immediately precedes it says applause and laughter. It might just 0:10:29.120 --> 0:10:31.120 be a sly reference on the part of the speech 0:10:31.120 --> 0:10:34.080 writer to say, look, how clever I am. We're gonna 0:10:34.160 --> 0:10:38.480 pause for applause and laughter winky face because I'm so funny. 0:10:39.080 --> 0:10:41.840 So it could have been an inside joke. I mean, obviously, 0:10:42.000 --> 0:10:45.599 no one who's hearing the speech would have seen this. 0:10:45.600 --> 0:10:48.560 This was something that was written down on paper. But 0:10:50.240 --> 0:10:53.559 first of all, I hate stage directions and speeches like this. 0:10:54.120 --> 0:10:58.360 This is just commentary on Jonathan's part. I hate stage 0:10:58.400 --> 0:11:01.000 directions and speeches because it he suppose, is what an 0:11:01.040 --> 0:11:04.280 audience's reaction to your speech is going to be. So 0:11:04.640 --> 0:11:08.400 pause for applause or pause for laughter, or to phrases 0:11:08.600 --> 0:11:13.120 I hate to see in speeches. It is a lot 0:11:13.160 --> 0:11:15.760 of hubrists to assume that you're going to get applause 0:11:15.880 --> 0:11:17.800 or laughter at those parts. Now, if you do get 0:11:17.840 --> 0:11:20.959 those responses, you need to know how to ride them 0:11:20.960 --> 0:11:23.800 out when you're giving a public presentation, so that you 0:11:23.840 --> 0:11:26.680 can wait until it crests and as it begins to 0:11:26.760 --> 0:11:28.880 die down, you can pick back up with your speech 0:11:29.240 --> 0:11:32.199 and people will not miss what you have to say. 0:11:32.240 --> 0:11:36.880 But there's nothing more awkward then watching a public presentation 0:11:36.960 --> 0:11:40.280 where clearly there was a stage direction to pause for 0:11:40.360 --> 0:11:44.240 some audience reaction and there's no reaction. It's just you know, 0:11:44.320 --> 0:11:46.600 you might as well have that cricket sound effect playing 0:11:46.600 --> 0:11:51.080 in the background terribly awkward. So, if in fact was 0:11:51.200 --> 0:11:58.560 an intentional emoticon, it was incredibly bold to suggest that 0:11:58.640 --> 0:12:00.760 I am so clever that clear people are going to 0:12:00.840 --> 0:12:05.600 laugh winky face. More importantly, most scholars think it probably 0:12:05.720 --> 0:12:08.520 was either a typo or it was a late example 0:12:09.120 --> 0:12:14.679 of that wanton punctuation I had mentioned about the seventeenth century. Uh, 0:12:14.720 --> 0:12:16.600 it may very well have just been one of those 0:12:16.640 --> 0:12:21.040 elements where that was kind of a a habit on 0:12:21.200 --> 0:12:23.160 behalf of the person who was writing the speech. Not 0:12:23.440 --> 0:12:27.000 an indicator that this was an emoticon, but rather when 0:12:27.000 --> 0:12:28.880 they would close out of parentheses, they would put in 0:12:28.880 --> 0:12:32.280 this semicolon and then close parentheses, because that's the kind 0:12:32.280 --> 0:12:34.680 of stuff we used to see a couple hundred years earlier. 0:12:35.679 --> 0:12:39.600 The the point being that we cannot be sure this 0:12:39.640 --> 0:12:42.120 was an intentional effort to put in some sort of 0:12:42.160 --> 0:12:48.319 emotional intent within a written document, although it doesn't stop 0:12:48.320 --> 0:12:50.880 people from sometimes citing it as one of the earliest 0:12:50.960 --> 0:12:55.920 uses of emoticons. Now there is at least one nineteenth 0:12:56.080 --> 0:13:01.560 century occurrence that was clearly intentional. It really was an emoticon, 0:13:03.000 --> 0:13:05.840 not necessarily the way we use them today, but that 0:13:06.040 --> 0:13:09.360 is exactly what it was, because we're told that's what 0:13:09.400 --> 0:13:13.520 it is. This was back in one there was a 0:13:13.559 --> 0:13:18.000 satirical magazine in the United States called Puck. Puck was 0:13:18.160 --> 0:13:22.160 essentially what the Onion is today. It was satire and 0:13:22.200 --> 0:13:26.840 it was meant to poke fun at different institutions and traditions. 0:13:27.320 --> 0:13:32.240 So this was fully with that intent. There was a 0:13:32.240 --> 0:13:37.160 piece titled typographical Art and it stated that the printing 0:13:37.200 --> 0:13:41.120 press was now capable of creating expressions that rivaled those 0:13:41.200 --> 0:13:45.679 made by cartoonists. This was sort of like any other 0:13:45.800 --> 0:13:49.440 article in a satire. It was meant to make a 0:13:49.559 --> 0:13:53.720 ridiculous claim and then provide evidence that in no way 0:13:53.880 --> 0:13:57.079 really supports that claim. It's very flimsy evidence, but that's 0:13:57.080 --> 0:14:01.600 where the humor is right. So specifically, article states, we 0:14:01.679 --> 0:14:04.840 wish it to be distinctly understood that the letter press 0:14:04.920 --> 0:14:07.840 department of this paper is not going to be trampled 0:14:07.840 --> 0:14:12.079 on by any tyrannical crowd of artists in existence. We 0:14:12.160 --> 0:14:14.440 mean to let the public see that we can lay 0:14:14.440 --> 0:14:18.280 out in our own typographical line all the cartoonists that 0:14:18.440 --> 0:14:22.560 ever walked for fear of startling the public. We will 0:14:22.600 --> 0:14:26.440 give only a small specimen of the artistic achievements within 0:14:26.480 --> 0:14:30.360 our grasp by way of a first installment. The following 0:14:30.600 --> 0:14:36.680 are from studies and passions and emotions. Then underneath this 0:14:36.720 --> 0:14:42.360 little paragraph there's a sequence of four different images that 0:14:42.400 --> 0:14:46.080 are made up of letter press symbols like parentheses and dashes, 0:14:46.200 --> 0:14:49.960 but they are oriented so that you can make vertical faces. 0:14:50.000 --> 0:14:53.080 They're not turned on their side the way emoticons would 0:14:53.120 --> 0:14:57.080 be later on. They're up and down, not left and right. Uh, 0:14:57.080 --> 0:14:59.920 and you know, they just make very primitive looking face 0:15:00.120 --> 0:15:03.800 says Underneath each face was a labeled to express what 0:15:04.000 --> 0:15:07.800 the emotion behind that face was supposed to be. So 0:15:07.920 --> 0:15:14.000 you had things like um, joy, melancholy, indifference, and astonishment, 0:15:14.080 --> 0:15:16.960 and it was all just very simple shapes. The joke 0:15:17.080 --> 0:15:20.880 being that the people in the letter press department are saying, 0:15:20.920 --> 0:15:24.520 we can show off just as much artistic integrity as 0:15:24.560 --> 0:15:27.360 your greatest cartoonists. So don't think you can walk all 0:15:27.400 --> 0:15:30.920 over us, because our job is to set letters within 0:15:30.960 --> 0:15:33.720 a printing press in order to create these copies of 0:15:33.720 --> 0:15:37.520 the magazine. So it's a joke just saying we can 0:15:37.560 --> 0:15:40.680 do what you can do. But clearly the actual evidence 0:15:40.920 --> 0:15:46.120 was uh, severely lacking as far as subtlety or art 0:15:46.360 --> 0:15:52.440 is concerned. Those images do not in a regular use 0:15:52.480 --> 0:15:56.040 at this point. Remember this is predating things like typewriters. 0:15:56.120 --> 0:15:59.680 This is still putting movable type onto a press and 0:15:59.680 --> 0:16:05.760 then closing the press down. So typewriters and and the such, 0:16:05.840 --> 0:16:10.640 we're not really accessible by your general public at this time. 0:16:11.360 --> 0:16:14.040 So what about the smiley face itself? When did that 0:16:14.160 --> 0:16:18.640 become a symbol for happiness? Despite these early examples, it 0:16:18.840 --> 0:16:22.560 had not reached widespread adoption, and it appeared pretty late 0:16:22.640 --> 0:16:24.720 on the scene. It didn't happen the way it was 0:16:24.760 --> 0:16:29.280 shown in the film Forrest Gump. So there was no 0:16:29.440 --> 0:16:33.480 cross country jogger involved. There were no giant puddles of mud, 0:16:33.520 --> 0:16:36.560 there was no passing truck to splash anybody. None of 0:16:36.600 --> 0:16:40.400 that had anything to do with the invention of the 0:16:40.440 --> 0:16:43.800 traditional smiley face. That actually came out of a pr campaign. 0:16:45.000 --> 0:16:48.760 There was an add creator by the name of Harvey 0:16:48.880 --> 0:16:52.720 ross Ball, and he designed the smiley face. He was 0:16:52.760 --> 0:16:56.160 working on a campaign to help improve employee morale at 0:16:56.200 --> 0:16:59.920 an insurance company in the wake of several tumultuous at 0:17:00.000 --> 0:17:02.720 positions and mergers that the company had just been through, 0:17:03.080 --> 0:17:08.119 so employees were feeling stressed out, frustrated, nervous about their fate, 0:17:08.640 --> 0:17:11.119 and the company wanted to try and turn things around 0:17:11.160 --> 0:17:16.040 by creating a campaign of positivity. It took Ball about 0:17:16.160 --> 0:17:18.760 ten minutes to come up with the smiley face design, 0:17:18.840 --> 0:17:24.200 which included the yellow background, the slightly strange oval like 0:17:24.520 --> 0:17:27.800 eyes like they're not quite the same size and orientation, 0:17:28.040 --> 0:17:32.960 and then the not completely perfect, uh, parabolic arc that 0:17:33.160 --> 0:17:36.360 is the smile. There's a little bit of imperfection there 0:17:36.440 --> 0:17:39.160 that's purposefully put there, and it adds to the charm. 0:17:39.320 --> 0:17:41.640 All of that was Ball's design. It took him about 0:17:41.640 --> 0:17:44.359 ten minutes. He was paid the princely sum of forty 0:17:44.440 --> 0:17:49.680 five dollars for his design, and neither he nor State 0:17:49.880 --> 0:17:55.399 Mutual Life Assurance Company bothered to copyright or trademark the design. Uh. 0:17:55.480 --> 0:17:58.439 The rest of the story ends up being kind of 0:17:58.640 --> 0:18:03.879 less happy, but you know, let's tell it anyway. Because 0:18:03.880 --> 0:18:07.480 there was no copyright or trademark protection on the design, 0:18:07.880 --> 0:18:11.680 it was free for anyone to grab and use for themselves. 0:18:12.320 --> 0:18:15.159 There's nothing to prevent them from doing this. And in 0:18:15.200 --> 0:18:19.080 the nineteen seventies, two brothers named Murray and Bernard Spain 0:18:20.320 --> 0:18:22.960 decided that they wanted to use this image. They appropriated 0:18:23.000 --> 0:18:25.880 it and they used it in their own business. They 0:18:25.880 --> 0:18:29.080 were owners of a couple of different Hallmark card shops 0:18:29.080 --> 0:18:32.199 in the Philadelphia area, so they took the design and 0:18:32.240 --> 0:18:35.639 they added a phrase have a happy day, not have 0:18:35.720 --> 0:18:38.160 a nice day, but have a happy day, and they 0:18:38.160 --> 0:18:40.440 added that to the smiley face, and then they applied 0:18:40.480 --> 0:18:44.040 for a copyright, which they received, So they got a 0:18:44.080 --> 0:18:46.760 copyright that was on a design that in part was 0:18:46.840 --> 0:18:50.040 not theirs, that wasn't their creation, So they were able 0:18:50.080 --> 0:18:53.440 to copyright this design and use it for themselves. They 0:18:53.480 --> 0:18:56.240 also made a mint off of it because they were 0:18:56.320 --> 0:19:00.800 selling buttons and cards and shirts all with this logo 0:19:01.000 --> 0:19:04.480 and slogan on it, and it was incredibly popular during 0:19:04.520 --> 0:19:08.080 the nineteen seventies. Meanwhile, over in Europe, in France to 0:19:08.080 --> 0:19:12.080 be specific, there was a journalist named Franklin lou Frani 0:19:12.560 --> 0:19:16.560 who registered the smiley face mark for commercial use in Europe. 0:19:17.200 --> 0:19:20.239 He would use it to indicate news stories with an 0:19:20.320 --> 0:19:25.359 uplifting tone in a paper in France called Francis. He 0:19:25.520 --> 0:19:28.919 also was able to leverage this into a merchandizing boom. 0:19:29.000 --> 0:19:32.920 He called his design smiley, and he was selling all 0:19:32.960 --> 0:19:36.280 sorts of stuff like T shirts throughout Europe with the 0:19:36.280 --> 0:19:40.280 the image on it. One could argue, however, that his 0:19:40.400 --> 0:19:42.800 use of the smiley face to indicate items that were 0:19:42.840 --> 0:19:47.120 of good news in papers was similar to what emoticons 0:19:47.119 --> 0:19:50.520 would be used for today, So perhaps this counts as 0:19:50.560 --> 0:19:53.960 an early emoji. But let's get to the official birth 0:19:54.080 --> 0:19:57.760 of the emoticon itself as we think of it today. 0:19:58.400 --> 0:20:00.399 This actually dates to the nineteen e e d s 0:20:00.680 --> 0:20:05.200 in a computer lab at Carnegie Melon University. It's amazing 0:20:05.200 --> 0:20:07.480 that we can actually track down the birth of the 0:20:07.520 --> 0:20:11.760 emoticon as it is used today. Often these sort of 0:20:11.800 --> 0:20:14.800 things end up being buried in legend and lore, and 0:20:14.840 --> 0:20:18.800 we never really understand where something came from. It just 0:20:19.440 --> 0:20:22.399 we can kind of point when it became popular, but 0:20:22.760 --> 0:20:25.800 anything before that tends to be a mystery. Not so 0:20:25.840 --> 0:20:28.679 in this case, because things that existed online have a 0:20:28.720 --> 0:20:31.600 habit of sticking around, even if that online was just 0:20:31.760 --> 0:20:35.400 online in the case of a of a local network 0:20:35.440 --> 0:20:39.080 and not the Internet at large. Because we're talking about 0:20:40.880 --> 0:20:45.040 most universities didn't have access to the Internet. Carnegie Melon 0:20:45.160 --> 0:20:48.359 is probably an exception to that. But this was not 0:20:48.680 --> 0:20:52.280 a Internet meme. This was very local on a bulletin 0:20:52.280 --> 0:20:57.399 board system. So we can pinpoint the date of emoticon 0:20:57.560 --> 0:21:02.960 creation two September nineteen ninety two. So here's what was 0:21:03.000 --> 0:21:07.000 happening computer science students and other students who had become 0:21:07.040 --> 0:21:12.080 interested in computers. Uh, we're using a school electron bullet 0:21:12.119 --> 0:21:15.960 electronic bulletin board system or BBS to post messages to 0:21:16.000 --> 0:21:19.160 one another. So this was a predecessor to the news 0:21:19.240 --> 0:21:22.080 groups and forums that you would find over the Internet, 0:21:22.119 --> 0:21:24.560 but this would be a decade before the World Wide 0:21:24.560 --> 0:21:29.120 Web ever existed. To access a BBS, typically you would 0:21:29.200 --> 0:21:31.280 use a dial up modem and you would call a 0:21:31.320 --> 0:21:34.240 phone number that would be connected to a specific computer 0:21:34.400 --> 0:21:37.840 that hosted the bulletin board system. Some of these bulletin 0:21:37.880 --> 0:21:40.840 board systems could only have one connection at a time, 0:21:41.320 --> 0:21:43.320 so you might try and call and get a busy 0:21:43.359 --> 0:21:45.720 signal and you'd have to wait and try and call later. 0:21:46.160 --> 0:21:48.080 You also had a lot of bolletin board systems that 0:21:48.119 --> 0:21:52.960 tried to regulate traffic by charging per minute of use, 0:21:53.640 --> 0:21:55.760 and that way you could cut down on someone just 0:21:55.840 --> 0:21:58.920 hogging the bulletin board system just for him or herself. 0:21:59.720 --> 0:22:03.600 But it was again like a precursor to what the 0:22:03.640 --> 0:22:06.600 Internet would be. It was local, it was not the 0:22:06.760 --> 0:22:13.119 entire network of networks. There was, however, a different problem 0:22:13.160 --> 0:22:16.240 besides just how do you access this information? And that 0:22:16.320 --> 0:22:20.720 problem was in miscommunication. It's a problem that still persists 0:22:20.760 --> 0:22:23.280 to this day. In fact, as has always been the case, 0:22:23.440 --> 0:22:27.320 some folks would post messages or responses that were intended 0:22:27.440 --> 0:22:31.600 to be a joke, to be humorous. But when you 0:22:31.760 --> 0:22:35.160 just post text, as all of you know, you have 0:22:35.240 --> 0:22:40.040 no benefit of tone or facial expression or body language. 0:22:40.119 --> 0:22:43.919 None of those other elements of communication are present, and 0:22:44.000 --> 0:22:46.840 so sometimes it's difficult to suss out which messages are 0:22:46.840 --> 0:22:51.000 being cheeky or humorous versus which ones are being serious 0:22:51.080 --> 0:22:55.879 or sincere or outright insulting on purpose. It could be 0:22:55.920 --> 0:22:59.199 hard to determine what is what. That would lead to 0:22:59.240 --> 0:23:04.120 misunderstanding and misinterpretations. Sometimes that would completely derail any sort 0:23:04.160 --> 0:23:07.280 of discussion about whatever the topic was until someone was 0:23:07.320 --> 0:23:09.639 able to get everything back on track. So, in other words, 0:23:10.080 --> 0:23:13.520 it was creating a frustrating environment in which time would 0:23:13.520 --> 0:23:16.880 be wasted on stuff that really wasn't that important. And 0:23:16.960 --> 0:23:20.440 that's when a student stepped in. Uh, it was the thirties, 0:23:20.640 --> 0:23:23.840 thirty years old at the time. His name is Scott Falman, 0:23:24.480 --> 0:23:28.719 and Scott Falman would come up with a solution to 0:23:28.840 --> 0:23:31.720 this problem. Now. I'll talk more about that in just 0:23:31.920 --> 0:23:35.000 a second, but first let's take a quick break to 0:23:35.119 --> 0:23:45.160 thank our sponsor. Falman himself has said that he wasn't 0:23:45.200 --> 0:23:49.560 the only person to suggest the use of some form 0:23:49.600 --> 0:23:56.760 of indicator that showed intent, that showed emotional intent behind messages, 0:23:56.800 --> 0:24:00.439 so that people could know how to interpret any given message, 0:24:00.440 --> 0:24:03.480 particularly ones that are jokes, so they don't mistake it 0:24:03.560 --> 0:24:08.800 for some sort of genuine request or statement. But there 0:24:08.960 --> 0:24:11.680 was a group that had been advocating for some sort 0:24:11.680 --> 0:24:16.080 of system that would either tell you a message was 0:24:16.160 --> 0:24:19.560 serious or wasn't serious. According to Falman himself, about half 0:24:19.560 --> 0:24:22.480 of the group were seriously suggesting that approach, and the 0:24:22.480 --> 0:24:26.440 other half were kind of making a joke, thus illustrating 0:24:26.480 --> 0:24:28.800 the need for the system in the first place, because 0:24:28.960 --> 0:24:32.200 not even everybody who was saying we need this actually 0:24:32.320 --> 0:24:35.439 meant it. Some of them were joking about it, so 0:24:35.480 --> 0:24:36.960 I guess it was hard to tell since they hadn't 0:24:37.000 --> 0:24:41.840 invented emoticons yet. There were several competing ideas that were 0:24:41.840 --> 0:24:45.960 put forward to indicate tone and intent, and Falman was 0:24:46.000 --> 0:24:49.560 the one who said that you should use two different 0:24:49.920 --> 0:24:53.800 sets of marks to indicate what the message is all about. 0:24:54.200 --> 0:24:58.440 So you would use a colon dash and closed parentheses 0:24:58.640 --> 0:25:01.360 combination to indicate a joke that would be the smiley 0:25:01.400 --> 0:25:05.679 face the sideway smiley face, or a colon dash open 0:25:05.840 --> 0:25:08.919 parentheses to indicate a serious post that would be the 0:25:08.920 --> 0:25:13.040 frownie face. It didn't take much time at all before 0:25:13.080 --> 0:25:17.040 people started using the frownie face not to indicate serious posts, 0:25:17.119 --> 0:25:21.920 but instead to indicate displeasure or frustration or anger. So 0:25:22.440 --> 0:25:27.480 very quickly they began to appropriate that frownie face for 0:25:27.600 --> 0:25:31.080 a purpose that was different than what was originally intended. 0:25:31.160 --> 0:25:36.600 But it made sense because being serious doesn't necessarily mean 0:25:36.640 --> 0:25:40.639 frownie face, right, You can be serious without being sad 0:25:40.800 --> 0:25:45.520 or upset. Uh. They wanted to use that more as 0:25:45.560 --> 0:25:48.400 an indicator that this is something that they do not like. 0:25:49.720 --> 0:25:52.120 And so that's how that's how it came to mean 0:25:52.160 --> 0:25:55.240 what it meant. It's the way people use It doesn't 0:25:55.240 --> 0:25:57.760 matter what you intended when you created it, it matters 0:25:57.880 --> 0:26:01.760