Sunshine smile is the most amazing expressions on a human face. Cheeky chuckles, blushing ones, blah, blah are the happy expressions on the human face. What happens when the sunshine smile is converted into ghastly graphics making pace in the normal communication across the internet. Yes, I am talking about the four letter word of the electronic world called smilies. It is not that I loathe at the techno smilies, but it is the techno smilies in the emails which is annoying. No matter how aggressive you can be---just be, since the smilies are there to cover it. Smilies are used
for unimaginable rudeness but since they are disguised under the garb of the beaming face, you cannot even take the umbrage. It seems the damned colon/bracked combination gives you a get-out-of-jail card. Everytime !!!


However, you cannot argue about it. The sender of such messages with stupid smileys cannot be construed as an insult, even if the statement accompanying the graphic is slashing, remorseful or even worse- fuming. This ingenious, insidious little creature has also found way in the official conversation. The WordPress has a whole new listing for smilies ranging from sunshine smilies to winking and the sad faces.
No wonder, they are considered the most acceptable tools on conveying messages. I guess I missed the whole movement when personal emoticons were deemed an essential part of the professional missives. If I had a rupee for every single email I get with the blasted graphic—the smiley particularly pops up every time the sender has forgotten to do their job—I could quit it.

This callous and frivolous approach of communication got me thinking . Smilies are most often used by people who aren’t particularly good with the language. Otherwise they would know there is a specific word for every single emotion/ action in the dictionary and they would use it. The tragic part of the story is that these days most internet users are not competent to use the language. Since they insist on forcing it they think that slang, short forms and cartoon characters are acceptable –they do not even realize that they are erring on the side of the heinous. We have chosen to mangle the language in the name of colloquialism. Most newspaper subeditors genuinely believe that the phrase ‘chatting up’ is the correct way to state that the two people are talking. Err, in case you don’t know; Chatting up has sexual undertones and chatting means conversation.

It is a peripatetic creature that embraces commonly used terms as its own. Therefore, an originally French word, ‘joie de vivre’, is in the Oxford dictionary and also the Hindi word ‘masala’. The democratic approach of the language allows for its ruin and its malleability is mistaken for us to denote leniency. I do not think so. 

If you get a smiley from me in any form, it won’t mean happy, sunshine faces. It will mean quite the opposite. Exactly, like you meant it.