Reading comments in different communities, I noticed that users hardly leave smilies. Why is that?
༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ
I’m coming from the old ages of internet where we didn’t have them. I’m fine with them, but I’m too old to use them comfortably.
It’s fine. Use them if you like, but I don’t really see the value in systems such as Discord where you pay money to have special emojis and so on…
Scott E. Fahlman proposed using :-) and :-( to mark jokes and not-jokes respectively in internet posts in 1982, and they (and lots of variations) have been in use ever since. IBM’s Codepage 437 character set (as used by the original PC) had two dedicated smiley characters even before that.
There was no golden age of the internet where there were no emoticons.