The Pun Also Rises

"55 Smiles An Hour"

    Some people seem to think that the rise of Internet usage among America's youth is a sign that literary intelligence is on the decline. Whether it's the reading of teenage angsty rants instead of Shakespeare, or the abbrevs ppl use 4 words, or just the rampant emoticons, the perception is that communications online have made us more stupider. :(

    I don't think that's true. :)

    First of all, perhaps the emoticons are reactions to stupidity, rather than a cause. We worry that people unable to see our face might not understand our subtle emotional reactions, so we assist them by using emoticons as punctuation. Recent studies have shown that the pet food contamination is a larger epidemic than originally suspected, and may affect human food as well. :(

    But emoticons also have interesting things to teach us. :-O I was chatting with someone online the other week, and he punctuated his sentence with a happy anime emoticon. ^_^ I replied that I was happy to see his different smiley face. :) He explained to me that the two different smileys actually reflect a big cultural difference in eastern and western cultures. :-O

    Apparently, Americans are more likely to focus on your mouth to determine whether you are happy, while East Asians are more likely to focus on your eyes. o.O As a pupil of culture, I found this news to be eye-opening. 8*) Politicians promising no new taxes might ask us to read their lips, but wouldn't look us in the eye. :/

    Bush knows that eyes are the window into the soul, which is how he read Putin's soul at their first meeting. (@_O) When Irish eyes are smiling, and love is a twinkle in one's eye, why do we not lash out when people just give us lip? Eyes are the best way to read people, and we've kept a lid on this knowledge for too long. (=_=)

    I have to stop with the emoticons because they're hurting my eyes. I should probably relax my eyes by sitting in the dark so my pupils can expand. Some people believe doing this every day will help you live longer, because you'll dilate. Then again, some people don't like when my jokes keep getting cornea.

    My point is, there are many ways in which typing to people over the Internet is inferior to talking to them in person. You can't watch them suffer in response to a bad pun, you can't give them a hug, you can't take their food, and you can't look deeply into their eyes to determine what they're really thinking.

    Still, we're going to be using the Internet. And not just because it lets you have polite conversation without having to wear pants, but because it's often more convenient than meeting face to face. And so we try to make up for the deficiencies mentioned in the previous paragraph as best we can.

    People type "*groan*" to show that they are suffering, or "*hug*" to console you from suffering, or "Congratulations (¬_¬)" to show that they are ostensibly happy that you got promoted to Executive Assistant Sporkflinger, although they have been flinging sporks for nearly five years and are slightly miffed to have been passed over again. It's not as good as being in person, but even online eyes can convey a lot.

    Sadly, we still lack a good Internet substitute for stealing people's food. This is why I insist on conducting all of my lunch meetings in person. It's just better to actually interact with other human beings. If we're ever meeting for lunch, I hope you will take advantage of being face to face and actually look into my eyes. That should keep your attention away from my hands long enough for me to steal your food. (O_-)

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Seth Brown is an award-winning :) humor writer who has used up his entire yearly allotment of emoticons in writing this article. His column appears in the Transcript on Fridays. His website is www.RisingPun.com.

   All work on this page is copyright Seth Brown. If you are sharing it, please give attribution. If you want to reprint it, please contact me first.