If you're looking for fun and weird look no further than Japan. Ever. They have both markets covered. So it makes sense that their emoticons are even more fun and weird than ours. Get ready for Japanese emoticon fun.
\ (^_^) /
For those of you unfamiliar with what an emoticon is, it's this :) or this :( If you don't recognize these I'm sorry to inform you it's possible you might be dead. Or a cat, or a jar of mayonnaise. Whatever you are, you're not a living, walking, talking human because emoticons are EVERYWHERE.
Table of Contents
What's an emoticon?
An emoticon uses keyboard characters to represent faces and things. Emojis on the other hand are the more lifelike evolution of emoticons.
Here you see a happy face emoticon on the left and a happy face emoji on the right.
:) VS 🙂
So how did all of this start anyway?
History of the Emoticon
Date first used: September 19th, 1982 at 11:44 a.m.
Inventor: Dr. Scott Fahlman
Dr. Scott Fahlman a professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburg, first proposed his new invention - the smiley face emoticon - in an email to colleagues after some computer messages joking about elevators crashing were interpreted as truth.
He decided that if this was how people were going to communicate online then they'd better come up with some way to identify certain sentences as jokes. They needed what he called a "joke marker". He and his colleagues toyed with various keyboard characters to represent a joke.
For days they looked down at their keyboards trying to determine WHICH keyboard character was the funniest. Was it the “%,” the “*,” or the “#” ? They also considered the ampersand, (&) since someone decided it looked like a "jolly fat man in convulsions of laughter." I'm not sure about you, but I do not see a jolly laughing man.
&
If anything I see a baby that just fell on its bum.
The debate was ended when Fahlman, computer nerd extraordinaire, sent this message:
19-Sep-82 11:44 Scott E Fahlman :-)
From: Scott E Fahlman
I propose that the following character sequence for joke markers:
:-)
Read it sideways. Actually, it is probably more economical to mark things that are NOT jokes, given current trends. For this, use:
:-(
message quote from Narratively
You can see that over the past 30 years we've shortened :-) to :). Because who has the time for a nose.
If you look at these things, :) :( from a sideways perspective as he points out, you can see that they represent a smiling face or a frowning face. Someone at some point became especially brilliant and invented the winking face ;) That's about as advanced as we've become in North America when it comes to emoticons.
:) :( ;)
You've got your happy, your sad and your i'm telling you the truth, but don't want you to be offended so I'll put this ambiguous wink here to soften the blow.
The sideways emoticon is NOT the way it's done in Japan. Japanese text emoticons are ready to read straight on.
No need to turn your phone, your head or your eyeballs sideways, which is especially important in Japan. In North America if you tip your head, become dizzy and stumble a bit, the scariest thing you'll fall into is the Grand Canyon. Do the same thing in Japan and you could fall into a Japanese hipster dressed up as a Hello Kitty Storm Trooper. Eek.
A lot of their emoticons are based on the Japanese keyboard, but there are a few that work with a regular North American keyboard.
Please enjoy the Japanese emoticon versions of angry, happy, surprised, tired, excited, dead and ... John Lennon. I know! What??? \_(*o*)_/
Copy & Paste Emoticons
How to Type Japanese Emoticons
(>_<)
Angry/frustrated - left bracket, underscore, less than, right bracket
(^_^)
Happy - left bracket, caret, underscore, caret, right bracket
( -_-)
Mellow - left bracket, space, hyphen, underscore, hyphen, right bracket
(°J°)
John Lennon - left bracket, degree sign, capital J, degree sign, right bracket
(o_o)
Surprised - left bracket, capital O, underscore, capital O, right bracket
(=J=)
Tired - left bracket, equal, capital J, equal, right bracket
(^_^) /
Yay! - backslash, space, left bracket, caret, underscore, caret, right bracket, space, forward slash
_(*o*)_/
Oh no/What? - backslash, underscore, left bracket, asterisk, small O, asterisk, right bracket, underscore, forward slash
(X_X)
Dead - left bracket, capital X, underscore, capital X, right bracket
(^._.^)~
Cat - left bracket, caret, period, underscore, period, caret, right bracket, squiggly
I know. I thought it was bizarre they had a John Lennon emoticon too. When exactly would you need to use that?
Wife: Hey honey. Could you pick up some of those things (°J°) sang about?
Husband: Huh??
Wife: Strawberries. Could you pick up strawberries?
So as you're texting, emailing, Instagramming, Facebooking or Tweeting at someone whip some of these out.
It's nice to use these more elaborate emoticons. It shows the recipient you think they're important enough to use more than a generic emoticon, just not important enough to use actual words.
Have a good weekend!
love your site and you but so many pop up ads are making it difficult to read
Here’s my cat
=^..^=
I cat like that, too!
But my happy face is =)
This may be my favorite blog ever.
\_(*o*)_/
What a random and fun post. I love the new emoticons that I had never thought of previously--- breast emoticons; chicken and other creature emoticons... but my new favorite for sure, the "excited with pom-poms" emoticon.
*\(^_^)/*
You are your readers are the best!!!
My life is now complete. 🙄
In high school in Canada, back in the day, we studied essays by Dorothy Parker. I believe she is the first person to come up with emoticons as she used -) on her typewriter to denote that she was speaking tongue-in-cheek. Dorothy Parker died in 1967, just a few years after I finished high school.
My favorite: ಠ_ಠ
It's mostly called the Reddit face since it was popularized on that website. I love it for outrage, disbelief, WTF, etc. :)
Love. They look like Lego people.
This is wonderful and very, very useful. FYI for future reference, Pittsburgh is spelled with an “h” at the end. 🙃🙃
It seems that somewhere along the way, many of the original emoticons in your post got changed to emojis. Does the Internet no longer support "old fashioned" emoticons? :)
Noooo, lol. I see that just now. It must have happened after publishing. Ack. I'll fix it right now. (hopefully) ~ karen!
Too funny - you'll probably have to create jpegs or something to get the point across.
I love the fliping table:
(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻
:D :D
So GREAT! ~ karen
I like this one myself - does double duty if you're mad or disapprove: >:-(
I came across the following link and instantly thought about this thread. For your viewing pleasure:
http://files.diadu.net/flash/loops/Animu/osaka.swf
LOL. How did you ever happen to "come across" that! ~ karen
What did you find? It must be gone, or I am doing something wrong.
Charmaine, copy that link into a browser that will allow flashplayer to run in it. I used Firefox. When it starts, the music is loud, so prep your volume accordingly. ;-)
If it still won't work: it's a still shot of a anime girl & her face changes like on a dial...all while "About You Now" song is blasting. Some of her dialed-face changes are emoticons, such as above. Oh & the background is flashing colored, pixelated squares/rectangles.
Want some more fun & weird? Try boobicons.
"perfect" breasts
(o)(o)
silicon breasts
( + )( + )
Perky breasts
(*)(*)
Big nipple breasts
(@)(@)
A cups
o o
D cups
{ O }{ O }
Wonder bra breasts
(oYo)
Cold breasts
( ^ )( ^ )
Lopsided breasts
(o)(O)
Pierced Nipple Breasts
(Q)(O)
Hanging Tassels Breasts
(p)(p)
Grandma's Breasts
\ o /\ o /
Against The Shower Door Breasts
( )( )
Android Breasts
| o | | o |
Martha Stewart's Breasts
($)($)
Mamogrammed Breasts
___ ___
Be breast cancer aware and check 'em out regularly.
xx
LOL. Those are great! ~ k
OMG!!! Those are the best! Love it!
:-D :-D :-D Hilarious.
haha! awesome :)
There is a really great "dictionary" of them here: http://club.pep.ne.jp/~hiroette/en/facemarks/ and some good ones here that don't always work on every comp (I think you have to have certain fonts installed) http://newmoticons.com/
I love that you may be the only person who can write an entire post on emoticons and not only do I feel happily entertained, but educated.
Although it would have been awesome if you had "hand written" the emoticons on your meals chalkboard. \_(*o*)_/
Thank you. Wait'll you get to the tip I give about buying eyeglasses in today's post. ~ karen!
In Japanese, emoticon is emoji. Almost the same!
Natika - Actually ... emoticons are :) and emojis are the actual happy faces. Although it may be different in Japan. ~ karen!
Are English people saying "emoji" now?!? I had no idea. They most definitely don't use "emoticon" in Japan. Both the actual cartoon character or a face typed out using regular characters is called an emoji in Japan.
They were just talking about the John Lennon one on a drama I was watching the other day! What a coincidence!
It actually means surprised in the Tohoko region of Japan (yes, THAT area). Most Japanese say "Eh!" when surprised (Yes, the same as Canadians), but they add a "j" to it in the Tohoku region, so it sounds just like the letter "j", but more staccato. Said once, it means "a bit surprised", twice means, "rather surprised" and thrice means "Holy Purple Chickens Batman!"
Also, don't forget the most important one in Japan, the bowing person - m(_ _)m or m(._.)m
There's also the kiss (^3^)
The super excited with pompoms *\(^-^)/*
The sad (;_;) and the other sad (T_T)
The angry #( `0') and the WTF \( `0')/
The sheepish ('~')
The worried `('_')`
A bear ('(I)')
The pleased (^-^)
And many many more... (^-^)
OIC!! (^._.^)~
Got it! Thx.
These are so cute!!!
How do you do the little dots (eyes) that's in the cat?
They're just periods with a line in between, Jeanne. ~ karen!