Emoticon Birthday
September 19 · Level 10 · #190 of 2238
Emoticon Birthday celebrates a tiny solution to a familiar problem: how do you show that a typed message is a joke? In 1982, Scott Fahlman suggested using :-) on a university electronic message board to make that distinction clearer.
How it is celebrated: people exchange text-based smiles, revisit early internet habits and share stories about online communication. A friendly message with a three-character grin fits the occasion perfectly.
Fahlman’s original suggestion included an instruction to read the symbols sideways. Tilt your head, and the colon, hyphen and parenthesis become a smiling face.