Fame

I don't know how you feel about emoticons. My guess is that you despise them or have no idea what I'm talking about. I realize that there is a strong pre-pubescent stigma associated with emoticons but I know their true history and armed with that knowledge I use them to help communicate. For instance, if I were to mention to you that I had just eaten some guacamole by accident then I would want you to understand that doing so makes me feel slant-mouthed so I would type this.. :/
I can't believe you don't know what emoticons are. OK, I'll tell you, but I feel like I'm tooting my own horn here because if you didn't know, Paul and I invented emoticons. Emoticons are typed characters that represent a face in the attitude of expressing an emotion. Also, the face is turned on its side. Turn your head to the left 90 degrees to read the next few lines:

:) <- happy
:( <- sad
:P <- poking my tongue out at you
:/ <- slant mouthed

There aren't any more than that because think about it. Slant mouth says it all, really. Ok, so you've probably already heard about how Paul and I put a big white letter "Y" on the side of a mountain in Provo when we got confused trying to write "Cool guys" on the mountain. You've also probably heard about how we invented instant messaging. I imagine you've had quite a few moments of smug superiority telling people "I know the guys that invented IM." I don't blame you. Well, since you've never heard of emoticons, I'm guessing you also haven't heard about how they were invented by Paul and me. And since you don't know what they are, you're still probably more pleased with yourself for knowing the inventors of IM (and maybe a little bit as the guys who put the Y up there on that mountain). I'll fill you in. So after we invented IM we were messaging each other and Paul said something that made me smile so I typed back to him "<smile>". That happened several times before I responded, "<smile> is too many characters. I need a shortcut. So from now on, this means <smile> -> :)" He thought the arrow pointing to the smile was part of the smile and for a while there was some miscommunication because he thought the smile looked rather evil. see? >:) <- Evil smile. Once we got that cleared up he really liked the idea and added the frowny face to the collection. Now we could always quickly notify the other how his previous statement made us feel. But then one time he told me he was eating nachos and I couldn't have any. This made me feel sad, but also a little cheeky, so I invented the tongue poking out emoticon and sent it to him. At first he thought it meant that I was drooling over his nachos. Next came slant mouth which we believe is self-evident. So there you have it. The history of emoticons in a nutshell. So the mere fact that sloppy and uneducated children use emoticons fervently should not dissuade you from accepting them for their ability to convey feelings via an emotionally neutral medium like text.