WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.879 Imagine spending like a quarter of a million 00:00:02.879 --> 00:00:09.419 dollars, $237 ,500 to be exact, on a digital 00:00:09.419 --> 00:00:11.460 receipt for a colon, a hyphen, and a bracket. 00:00:11.839 --> 00:00:13.880 I mean, it sounds completely absurd on its face. 00:00:14.019 --> 00:00:17.640 A literal fortune spent on just three standard 00:00:17.640 --> 00:00:20.280 punctuation marks. Right. But that transaction 00:00:20.280 --> 00:00:22.980 actually happened back in 2021. And what that 00:00:22.980 --> 00:00:25.339 buyer was really paying for wasn't just like 00:00:25.339 --> 00:00:28.100 punctuation, they were buying the documented 00:00:28.100 --> 00:00:30.199 origin point of a global language. Yeah, they 00:00:30.199 --> 00:00:32.679 bought the exact moment humanity figured out 00:00:32.679 --> 00:00:34.899 how to inject its tone of voice into a machine, 00:00:35.619 --> 00:00:38.719 which is it's a huge deal. It really is. And 00:00:38.719 --> 00:00:40.899 it's the ultimate solution to a problem that 00:00:40.899 --> 00:00:43.280 has plagued written communication for as long 00:00:43.280 --> 00:00:45.079 as we've been writing. Like how do you convey 00:00:45.079 --> 00:00:48.299 sarcasm or genuine sympathy or pure joy when 00:00:48.299 --> 00:00:51.079 all you have is this rigid text only framework. 00:00:51.640 --> 00:00:53.439 Exactly. The words are there, sure, but the music 00:00:53.439 --> 00:00:55.799 of the conversation is completely missing. And 00:00:55.799 --> 00:00:58.100 that missing music is exactly the focus of our 00:00:58.100 --> 00:01:00.700 deep dive today. We are pulling from a really 00:01:00.700 --> 00:01:03.759 comprehensive, incredibly detailed source, the 00:01:03.759 --> 00:01:05.780 foundational Wikipedia article on the emoticon. 00:01:05.920 --> 00:01:08.620 Which, just to define it officially right up 00:01:08.620 --> 00:01:12.140 front, is a portmanteau of emotion and icon. 00:01:12.739 --> 00:01:15.379 It's a pictorial representation of facial expressions 00:01:15.379 --> 00:01:18.640 using regular characters, you know, like punctuation, 00:01:18.879 --> 00:01:21.719 numbers, and letters to convey non -verbal cues. 00:01:22.079 --> 00:01:24.319 Okay, let's unpack this because our mission today 00:01:24.319 --> 00:01:27.939 is to explore the surprisingly centuries -old 00:01:27.939 --> 00:01:31.469 history. the cultural variations, and the high 00:01:31.469 --> 00:01:33.769 -stakes economy of these little faces. Yeah, 00:01:33.769 --> 00:01:36.209 because every time you type a simple smiley face 00:01:36.209 --> 00:01:38.549 on your phone, you are actually participating 00:01:38.549 --> 00:01:40.909 in a lineage of human expression that goes back 00:01:40.909 --> 00:01:43.689 way, way further than the internet. Way further, 00:01:43.689 --> 00:01:45.930 right. Like, before we even get to computer screens, 00:01:46.010 --> 00:01:48.109 we have to look at how people try to solve this 00:01:48.109 --> 00:01:50.469 tone problem in print. Right. If you look at 00:01:50.469 --> 00:01:52.790 the historical footprint, the earliest potential 00:01:52.790 --> 00:01:54.709 sighting in our sources is actually from the 00:01:54.709 --> 00:01:58.430 year 1648. Wow, 1648. Yeah, a poet named Robert 00:01:58.439 --> 00:02:00.719 wrote a line of verse that ends with the phrase, 00:02:01.019 --> 00:02:03.599 smiling yet, followed by a colon and a close 00:02:03.599 --> 00:02:06.340 parenthesis. Wait, so a literal sideways smiley 00:02:06.340 --> 00:02:08.419 face sitting right there in a 17th century poem? 00:02:08.900 --> 00:02:11.919 Well... We do have to be a bit careful with intent 00:02:11.919 --> 00:02:15.039 here. English professors like Alan Jacobs point 00:02:15.039 --> 00:02:18.960 out that 17th century typography was notoriously 00:02:18.960 --> 00:02:21.340 messy. Just kind of all over the place. Exactly. 00:02:21.599 --> 00:02:24.259 Printers often just threw colons and semicolons 00:02:24.259 --> 00:02:27.319 inside brackets as a matter of standard, albeit 00:02:27.319 --> 00:02:30.620 chaotic, practice. So the consensus leans toward 00:02:30.620 --> 00:02:33.180 it not being a deliberate face. Right. But even 00:02:33.180 --> 00:02:35.740 if it was just a typesetting accident, I mean, 00:02:35.879 --> 00:02:38.139 it highlights how long those specific shapes 00:02:38.139 --> 00:02:40.210 have been hiding in our literature. Definitely. 00:02:40.490 --> 00:02:43.330 And that ambiguity in print is exactly what forced 00:02:43.330 --> 00:02:46.009 people to develop actual deliberate systems once 00:02:46.009 --> 00:02:47.870 we hit the telegraph era. Like I was reading 00:02:47.870 --> 00:02:50.909 about the telegraph operators in 1857, and this 00:02:50.909 --> 00:02:53.270 completely shifted my perspective. Oh, the numeric 00:02:53.270 --> 00:02:55.469 codes. Yeah, that's a fascinating era. Yeah. 00:02:55.629 --> 00:02:57.449 They were using Morse code numbers to convey 00:02:57.449 --> 00:02:59.569 tone and affection quickly. They used the number 00:02:59.569 --> 00:03:03.020 73 to mean love and kisses. which eventually 00:03:03.020 --> 00:03:05.840 evolved into best regards. And they used 88 for 00:03:05.840 --> 00:03:08.259 a similar sign -off. And the mechanics of the 00:03:08.259 --> 00:03:10.280 telegraph explain exactly why they did that. 00:03:10.479 --> 00:03:12.379 Because telegraph communication was charged by 00:03:12.379 --> 00:03:14.550 the word or the letter. Right, it wasn't cheap. 00:03:14.770 --> 00:03:17.129 Not at all. And physically tapping out a message 00:03:17.129 --> 00:03:20.370 was a slow, mechanical effort. Bandwidth was 00:03:20.370 --> 00:03:24.469 incredibly expensive. So tapping out 73 is vastly 00:03:24.469 --> 00:03:27.129 more efficient than transmitting, I am sending 00:03:27.129 --> 00:03:29.729 you my warmest affections. It's basically the 00:03:29.729 --> 00:03:32.050 19th century version of LO. You're just optimizing 00:03:32.050 --> 00:03:35.759 for speed. Exactly. But people were still subconsciously 00:03:35.759 --> 00:03:39.120 hunting for a visual solution, not just a numerical 00:03:39.120 --> 00:03:44.080 code. Like in 1862, a typist transcribing a speech 00:03:44.080 --> 00:03:46.840 by Abraham Lincoln noted the crowd's reaction. 00:03:46.979 --> 00:03:49.039 Oh, right. I saw this in the sources. Yeah. In 00:03:49.039 --> 00:03:51.000 the middle of the text, it says, quote, applause 00:03:51.000 --> 00:03:54.599 and laughter, end quote. Semicolon, close parenthesis. 00:03:55.120 --> 00:03:58.210 A winking face. But is that one real? or another 00:03:58.210 --> 00:04:00.750 accident. Linguist Philip Surgeon argues that 00:04:00.750 --> 00:04:03.090 one was just a pure typo, just a slip of the 00:04:03.090 --> 00:04:05.629 finger on the typewriter. OK, but by 1881, it 00:04:05.629 --> 00:04:08.289 definitely wasn't a typo anymore. Puck Magazine 00:04:08.289 --> 00:04:10.650 published what they called typographical art. 00:04:10.849 --> 00:04:12.889 Right. They explicitly laid out sequences of 00:04:12.889 --> 00:04:15.830 punctuation marks to show joy, melancholy, indifference, 00:04:15.909 --> 00:04:18.000 and astonishment. They were literally pointing 00:04:18.000 --> 00:04:19.899 at the typewriter and showing the public, like, 00:04:20.240 --> 00:04:22.060 look at what else these keys can do. And that 00:04:22.060 --> 00:04:24.660 idea caught the attention of some brilliant literary 00:04:24.660 --> 00:04:27.019 minds who recognized that the typewriter was, 00:04:27.120 --> 00:04:31.370 well, emotionally bankrupt. In 1912, the satirist 00:04:31.370 --> 00:04:34.589 Ambrose Bierce suggested using a curved horizontal 00:04:34.589 --> 00:04:36.750 line. Like a little smile. Yeah, to represent 00:04:36.750 --> 00:04:39.529 what he called cackination, or loud laughter. 00:04:40.230 --> 00:04:43.490 And later, in 1969, Vladimir Nabokov told the 00:04:43.490 --> 00:04:46.069 New York Times that he desperately wanted a supine 00:04:46.069 --> 00:04:49.449 round bracket to represent a smile in text. I 00:04:49.449 --> 00:04:52.569 just, I look at Nabokov wishing for a smile punctuation 00:04:52.569 --> 00:04:54.610 mark like a sci -fi author predicting the smartphone. 00:04:54.850 --> 00:04:57.529 He knew exactly what society needed. decades 00:04:57.529 --> 00:04:59.790 before the technology actually existed to make 00:04:59.790 --> 00:05:02.089 it a daily standard. He saw the gap, but he was 00:05:02.089 --> 00:05:04.730 just dreaming. Because the problem of tone couldn't 00:05:04.730 --> 00:05:06.970 actually be solved until technology forced our 00:05:06.970 --> 00:05:09.870 hand. Which happened disastrously in 1982. Yeah, 00:05:10.009 --> 00:05:11.970 that brings us from the desire for emotional 00:05:11.970 --> 00:05:15.259 texts to an absolute urgent necessity. Because 00:05:15.259 --> 00:05:18.139 when early computer networks came online, they 00:05:18.139 --> 00:05:20.660 stripped all vocal tone, all body language, and 00:05:20.660 --> 00:05:23.220 all facial expressions from real -time communication. 00:05:23.500 --> 00:05:25.639 And it didn't just cause awkwardness. No, it 00:05:25.639 --> 00:05:28.120 caused genuine panic. The mercury spill. This 00:05:28.120 --> 00:05:31.139 is the exact moment the conceptual became practical. 00:05:31.480 --> 00:05:34.100 So the year is 1982. We are at Carnegie Mellon 00:05:34.100 --> 00:05:36.779 University. Researchers are communicating on 00:05:36.779 --> 00:05:39.300 an early digital bulletin board system, a BBS, 00:05:39.399 --> 00:05:42.240 and someone posts a sarcastic joke about a mercury 00:05:42.240 --> 00:05:44.899 spill in a university elevator. Think about the 00:05:44.899 --> 00:05:49.220 mechanics of a BBS in 1982. You are looking at 00:05:49.220 --> 00:05:52.180 a text only black and white or green and black 00:05:52.180 --> 00:05:54.139 monitor. There is no formatting. There are no 00:05:54.139 --> 00:05:56.839 images. Nothing to give it away. Exactly. A joke 00:05:56.839 --> 00:05:59.839 about a lethal chemical spill looks fundamentally 00:05:59.839 --> 00:06:02.060 identical to an official safety warning about 00:06:02.060 --> 00:06:04.899 a lethal chemical spill. The readers had zero 00:06:04.899 --> 00:06:07.740 context clues. So computer scientist Scott Fallman 00:06:07.740 --> 00:06:10.490 steps in. He proposes a protocol to stop the 00:06:10.490 --> 00:06:13.029 panic. He posts a message suggesting that users 00:06:13.029 --> 00:06:15.970 type a colon, a hyphen, and a right bracket to 00:06:15.970 --> 00:06:19.069 label attempted humor. And a colon, hyphen, left 00:06:19.069 --> 00:06:21.850 bracket for serious messages. Right. And it's 00:06:21.850 --> 00:06:24.939 spread with astonishing speed. across the ARPANET 00:06:24.939 --> 00:06:27.139 and USENET. And to understand why it caught on 00:06:27.139 --> 00:06:29.279 so fast, you really have to look at the culture 00:06:29.279 --> 00:06:32.079 of those networks. ARPAN was heavily populated 00:06:32.079 --> 00:06:35.220 by universities and the military. So, very structured 00:06:35.220 --> 00:06:38.000 environments. Extremely. It was a high -density 00:06:38.000 --> 00:06:40.579 environment of engineers and scientists who relied 00:06:40.579 --> 00:06:44.800 entirely on standard protocols. Fallman essentially 00:06:44.800 --> 00:06:47.680 handed them a simple, elegant protocol for human 00:06:47.680 --> 00:06:50.689 emotion. But our sources mentioned that Fallman's 00:06:50.689 --> 00:06:53.129 design wasn't actually the only one proposed. 00:06:53.470 --> 00:06:55.829 People were actively trying to solve this problem 00:06:55.829 --> 00:06:58.170 with different symbols, right? Yeah. Somebody 00:06:58.170 --> 00:07:00.790 suggested using an asterisk and an ampersand, 00:07:01.110 --> 00:07:03.069 with the ampersand supposed to represent a person 00:07:03.069 --> 00:07:05.769 doubled over in laughter. Which is so complicated. 00:07:05.930 --> 00:07:08.550 It is. Others suggested a percent sign or a pound 00:07:08.550 --> 00:07:10.970 sign, but those alternative designs died out 00:07:10.970 --> 00:07:14.149 almost instantly. Fallman's won decisively. And 00:07:14.149 --> 00:07:16.189 I think there is a clear cognitive reason for 00:07:16.189 --> 00:07:18.579 that. I was thinking about why the colon and 00:07:18.579 --> 00:07:20.639 the brackets stuck while the ampersand vanished. 00:07:21.139 --> 00:07:23.399 Has to be periodotly right. Oh, the psychological 00:07:23.399 --> 00:07:25.980 phenomenon of seeing faces in random objects. 00:07:26.379 --> 00:07:29.319 Exactly. The human brain is hard -wired to look 00:07:29.319 --> 00:07:33.300 for faces in everything. Clouds, toast, the front 00:07:33.300 --> 00:07:37.339 grill of a car. The sideways face is an instant, 00:07:37.819 --> 00:07:39.759 universally recognizable pattern. That makes 00:07:39.759 --> 00:07:42.819 perfect sense. Right. If you send me an ampersand, 00:07:43.100 --> 00:07:45.800 I have to do... like cognitive work to remember 00:07:45.800 --> 00:07:49.319 that it's supposed to be guy laughing. But a 00:07:49.319 --> 00:07:51.680 colon and a bracket bypasses my intellect and 00:07:51.680 --> 00:07:53.560 hits the face recognition center of my brain 00:07:53.560 --> 00:07:56.459 immediately. Exactly. It was the most cognitively 00:07:56.459 --> 00:07:58.839 elegant solution available on a standard keyboard. 00:07:59.300 --> 00:08:01.439 And once that foundation was laid, the timeline 00:08:01.439 --> 00:08:04.019 really accelerates. Because users realized they 00:08:04.019 --> 00:08:06.360 didn't just have to use Falman's two faces. Right. 00:08:06.480 --> 00:08:09.199 The shapes naturally evolved. emoticons stopped 00:08:09.199 --> 00:08:11.480 being a rigid safety protocol and started functioning 00:08:11.480 --> 00:08:14.079 exactly like spoken slang. You get the semicolon 00:08:14.079 --> 00:08:16.199 for the wink. Yeah. The colon and the capital 00:08:16.199 --> 00:08:18.779 P for sticking your tongue out. The XD for eyes 00:08:18.779 --> 00:08:21.079 squinched shut in laughter. Even the less than 00:08:21.079 --> 00:08:24.040 three for a heart. And as this visual slang expanded, 00:08:24.240 --> 00:08:26.819 it underwent a subtle but highly significant 00:08:26.819 --> 00:08:30.939 change. In 1996, the Smiley Company, run by Nicholas 00:08:30.939 --> 00:08:33.980 Lufrani, launched the Smiley Dictionary to catalog 00:08:33.980 --> 00:08:37.879 over 500 of these ASCII emoticons. their catalog 00:08:37.879 --> 00:08:41.210 designs, they drop the hyphen. They removed the 00:08:41.210 --> 00:08:44.169 nose. It went from colon hyphen bracket to just 00:08:44.169 --> 00:08:46.470 colon bracket. Wait, so dropping the nose wasn't 00:08:46.470 --> 00:08:49.629 just laziness or trying to save a single keystroke. 00:08:50.110 --> 00:08:52.570 I mean, our sources note a researcher at Stanford 00:08:52.570 --> 00:08:56.090 University actually analyzed four million tweets 00:08:56.090 --> 00:08:59.129 and found that the noseless smiley is vastly 00:08:59.129 --> 00:09:01.990 more common today than Fallman's original version 00:09:01.990 --> 00:09:04.470 with the nose. It is vastly more common, yes. 00:09:04.649 --> 00:09:06.830 Are you saying the missing hyphen was a deliberate 00:09:06.830 --> 00:09:10.759 social signal? It absolutely is. Linguist Vivian 00:09:10.759 --> 00:09:13.940 Evans attributes this shift to a concept called 00:09:13.940 --> 00:09:17.440 covert prestige. Covert prestige? What does that 00:09:17.440 --> 00:09:20.700 mean exactly? Covert prestige occurs when a specific 00:09:20.700 --> 00:09:23.940 demographic, very often younger users, deliberately 00:09:23.940 --> 00:09:27.019 rejects the standard formal or quote unquote 00:09:27.019 --> 00:09:29.559 proper way of doing something. They do it to 00:09:29.559 --> 00:09:31.679 demonstrate in -group membership. Oh wow, that 00:09:31.679 --> 00:09:33.639 makes perfect sense. It's exactly like a teenager 00:09:33.639 --> 00:09:36.220 saying gonna. instead of going to. Precisely. 00:09:36.320 --> 00:09:38.320 If someone texts you a smiley face with a hyphen 00:09:38.320 --> 00:09:39.899 for a nose today, it almost feels like they're 00:09:39.899 --> 00:09:41.639 writing you a formal letter. Yeah, it feels like 00:09:41.639 --> 00:09:44.340 it's from my boss. Right. By dropping the nose, 00:09:44.519 --> 00:09:46.639 you are signaling to the reader that you are 00:09:46.639 --> 00:09:49.299 fluent in the casual modern digital landscape. 00:09:49.500 --> 00:09:52.460 You are actively rejecting the formality of the 00:09:52.460 --> 00:09:55.600 original 1982 protocol. You're saying, I'm fast, 00:09:55.700 --> 00:09:59.200 I'm part of the current culture? It's wild that 00:09:59.200 --> 00:10:01.879 there is an immense amount of social data packed 00:10:01.879 --> 00:10:04.759 into the absence of that tiny horizontal line. 00:10:04.899 --> 00:10:07.820 It really is. But we should note that all of 00:10:07.820 --> 00:10:10.980 that social data, all those sideways faces, were 00:10:10.980 --> 00:10:13.940 entirely dictated by the physical layout of Western 00:10:13.940 --> 00:10:15.799 keyboards. Oh, right. You had to tilt your head 00:10:15.799 --> 00:10:17.679 because of the specific keys we had available. 00:10:18.000 --> 00:10:20.360 Exactly. But as the internet spread globally, 00:10:20.620 --> 00:10:22.679 that physical limitation disappeared for a lot 00:10:22.679 --> 00:10:26.289 of users. leads to a massive geographical divergence. 00:10:26.710 --> 00:10:28.610 Because languages with different, much larger 00:10:28.610 --> 00:10:30.309 character sets didn't have to tilt their heads. 00:10:30.389 --> 00:10:31.929 They have the type of graphic tools to build 00:10:31.929 --> 00:10:34.110 faces that you read straight on. Exactly. This 00:10:34.110 --> 00:10:36.389 is where the creativity just explodes. We get 00:10:36.389 --> 00:10:39.610 to cow emoji. Right. Arising on ASCIInet in Japan 00:10:39.610 --> 00:10:43.230 around 1986, cow emoji are essentially vertical 00:10:43.230 --> 00:10:45.850 emoticons. Japanese characters are often double 00:10:45.850 --> 00:10:48.309 bite and offer a vast variety of curves and shapes. 00:10:48.570 --> 00:10:50.950 So users could construct detailed expressions 00:10:50.950 --> 00:10:53.840 without the sideways perspective. Like the classic 00:10:53.840 --> 00:10:58.100 awo or uwu. Yes. And it didn't stay isolated 00:10:58.100 --> 00:11:00.879 to Japan. Users on the Japanese discussion board 00:11:00.879 --> 00:11:04.210 to channel. And users in Korea started pulling 00:11:04.210 --> 00:11:06.990 from entirely different alphabets to build these 00:11:06.990 --> 00:11:09.450 faces. Like they grabbed Canada script from India 00:11:09.450 --> 00:11:12.330 to make that highly specific look of disapproval. 00:11:12.929 --> 00:11:15.090 The two circles with dots in the middle of the 00:11:15.090 --> 00:11:18.070 underscore. Write the T to matter face. And Korean 00:11:18.070 --> 00:11:21.669 users utilized hangul vowel jamos to depict crying 00:11:21.669 --> 00:11:24.309 faces where the vertical and horizontal lines 00:11:24.309 --> 00:11:27.590 perfectly mimic streams of tears. And in Chinese 00:11:27.590 --> 00:11:29.769 internet culture. They took it a step further 00:11:29.769 --> 00:11:32.210 and repurposed actual ideographic characters, 00:11:32.210 --> 00:11:34.090 right? They did. They found characters where 00:11:34.090 --> 00:11:36.330 the structural lines naturally formed a face. 00:11:36.690 --> 00:11:38.830 The character meaning patterned window is completely 00:11:38.830 --> 00:11:41.169 co -opted because it looks uncannily like an 00:11:41.169 --> 00:11:43.649 open -mouthed, distressed face. Oh, I see that 00:11:43.649 --> 00:11:46.049 one. Or the character, which is a variant of 00:11:46.049 --> 00:11:48.830 the word for plum. Because it resembles two little 00:11:48.830 --> 00:11:51.549 people standing side by side, it's used online 00:11:51.549 --> 00:11:53.950 to represent a double magnitude of dullness. 00:11:54.230 --> 00:11:56.929 They took it. Ancient scripts and turn them into 00:11:56.929 --> 00:11:59.490 modern emotional avatars. It's incredible. Yeah, 00:11:59.750 --> 00:12:02.549 but we have to talk about the legend of oars 00:12:02.549 --> 00:12:06.019 or Z The sources highlight this is a prime example 00:12:06.019 --> 00:12:08.080 of internet culture, but I need you to break 00:12:08.080 --> 00:12:10.299 down exactly how this started. It's a great story. 00:12:10.480 --> 00:12:13.320 It starts in late 2002 on a Japanese personal 00:12:13.320 --> 00:12:16.320 website forum called TechSide. A user was trying 00:12:16.320 --> 00:12:19.179 to ask a highly specific technical question about 00:12:19.179 --> 00:12:21.799 a cable and its cover. Okay, a cable and a cover. 00:12:21.980 --> 00:12:23.759 Yeah, and to illustrate what they were talking 00:12:23.759 --> 00:12:26.159 about, they typed out a sequence of characters. 00:12:27.009 --> 00:12:29.970 an underscore, a vertical pipe, a sort of roof 00:12:29.970 --> 00:12:32.250 character, another vertical pipe, and a circle. 00:12:32.389 --> 00:12:33.850 Okay, I'm trying to picture that in my head. 00:12:34.289 --> 00:12:37.470 A pipe, a roof shape, another pipe, and a circle. 00:12:38.029 --> 00:12:39.750 It just sounds like a drawing of a tiny house 00:12:39.750 --> 00:12:42.230 next to a ball. That's how it started, a completely 00:12:42.230 --> 00:12:45.029 mundane hardware diagram. But look at the circle 00:12:45.029 --> 00:12:47.769 as a head. Oh, wait, the roof character is the 00:12:47.769 --> 00:12:50.409 back, the pipe is the arms, it's a person on 00:12:50.409 --> 00:12:53.269 their hands and knees. Exactly. Other users looked 00:12:53.269 --> 00:12:55.450 at that sequence of characters and instantly 00:12:55.450 --> 00:12:58.970 recognized a stick figure doing a Japanese dogeza 00:12:58.970 --> 00:13:01.590 bow, which is like a person kneeling on the ground, 00:13:01.830 --> 00:13:04.789 head bowed in deep despair or frustration or 00:13:04.789 --> 00:13:08.149 profound respect. Right. And the internet's collaborative 00:13:08.149 --> 00:13:10.990 imagination took over instantly. That visual 00:13:10.990 --> 00:13:13.470 of the kneeling man was so resonant that the 00:13:13.470 --> 00:13:15.590 community quickly simplified it into standard 00:13:15.590 --> 00:13:18.570 Western letters to make it easier to type. O, 00:13:18.570 --> 00:13:21.730 R, and Z. Ah, so the O is the head on the ground. 00:13:21.850 --> 00:13:24.610 The R is the arms pushing up. And the Z is the 00:13:24.610 --> 00:13:28.269 bent legs, oars. That is wild. They saw a guy 00:13:28.269 --> 00:13:31.149 completely defeated by life. in the drawing of 00:13:31.149 --> 00:13:34.830 a cable cover. And ores spawn an entire subculture. 00:13:35.009 --> 00:13:37.590 There were blogs dedicated to it. It became a 00:13:37.590 --> 00:13:39.789 ubiquitous shorthand for crushing psychological 00:13:39.789 --> 00:13:42.009 frustration. I love how minimalist that is. Just 00:13:42.009 --> 00:13:44.230 like O7, where the O is the head and the seven 00:13:44.230 --> 00:13:46.809 is the arm saluting, it communicates instant 00:13:46.809 --> 00:13:49.509 respect with two keystrokes. It proves that once 00:13:49.509 --> 00:13:52.250 humans are given a medium, even a highly restrictive 00:13:52.250 --> 00:13:54.870 one like a standard keyboard, they will inevitably 00:13:54.870 --> 00:13:57.429 bend it toward emotional expression. But the 00:13:57.429 --> 00:14:00.159 medium didn't stay restrictive for long. because 00:14:00.159 --> 00:14:03.299 as technology evolved to support rich media moving 00:14:03.299 --> 00:14:05.639 from text -based bulletin boards to mobile phones 00:14:05.639 --> 00:14:08.360 and instant messaging, the simple punctuation 00:14:08.360 --> 00:14:11.779 marks were given a graphic facelift. Right. We 00:14:11.779 --> 00:14:14.700 call this the second generation, or portrait 00:14:14.700 --> 00:14:18.559 emoticons. In 1997, Nicholas Lufrani, who we 00:14:18.559 --> 00:14:20.779 mentioned earlier from the Smiley Company, took 00:14:20.779 --> 00:14:23.639 those ASSI text designs and officially registered 00:14:23.639 --> 00:14:26.500 them as graphical GIFs at the U .S. Copyright 00:14:26.500 --> 00:14:29.000 Office. Oh, wow. So he actually legally registered 00:14:29.000 --> 00:14:31.519 them. He did. He gave them color, added features 00:14:31.519 --> 00:14:34.519 like little white hands and gloves and categorized 00:14:34.519 --> 00:14:37.539 them. And the text strings morphed into visual 00:14:37.539 --> 00:14:39.539 icons. This is really where the emoticon economy 00:14:39.539 --> 00:14:42.240 takes off. Because suddenly these quirky workarounds 00:14:42.240 --> 00:14:44.940 became highly valuable commodities and the tech 00:14:44.940 --> 00:14:47.100 giants realize they needed to control this space. 00:14:47.659 --> 00:14:50.279 Absolutely. Between 2007 and 2009, companies 00:14:50.279 --> 00:14:52.440 like Google and Apple petitioned the Unicode 00:14:52.440 --> 00:14:55.240 Technical Committee to standardize emojis globally. 00:14:55.360 --> 00:14:57.879 Which is a huge deal, right? It is a critical 00:14:57.879 --> 00:15:01.080 mechanical shift. Unicode is the universal standard 00:15:01.080 --> 00:15:03.950 for how text is represented in computing. By 00:15:03.950 --> 00:15:06.549 getting emojis into Unicode, Google and Apple 00:15:06.549 --> 00:15:09.629 ensured that these graphical faces stopped being 00:15:09.629 --> 00:15:12.309 a localized software quirk -like, a specific 00:15:12.309 --> 00:15:14.909 font you had to download, and became fundamental 00:15:14.909 --> 00:15:17.909 global infrastructure. It meant a smiling face 00:15:17.909 --> 00:15:20.389 sent from an Apple device would be universally 00:15:20.389 --> 00:15:23.450 understood by a Google device. Exactly. And once 00:15:23.450 --> 00:15:26.990 it's infrastructure, it dominates. A 2024 BBC 00:15:26.990 --> 00:15:29.389 report noted that two of the top three emojis 00:15:29.389 --> 00:15:32.090 used globally are actually portrait emoticons 00:15:32.090 --> 00:15:34.690 faces representing emotion. And the media landscape 00:15:34.690 --> 00:15:37.429 capitalized on it, too. Like in 2004, the chat 00:15:37.429 --> 00:15:40.029 application Trillion introduced Amo the blips, 00:15:40.470 --> 00:15:42.629 which were streaming audio and video equivalents. 00:15:42.809 --> 00:15:45.450 Right. And in 2007, MTV created Emote Eclipse 00:15:45.450 --> 00:15:47.750 to market their show The Hills. Emote accounts 00:15:47.750 --> 00:15:49.789 were no longer just text protocols. They were 00:15:49.789 --> 00:15:52.149 multimedia assets. And where there are valuable 00:15:52.149 --> 00:15:54.529 assets, intellectual property battles inevitably 00:15:54.529 --> 00:15:56.490 follow. The legal stakes and the sources are 00:15:56.490 --> 00:15:58.710 fascinating. They really are. Like in the year 00:15:58.710 --> 00:16:02.320 2000, a company called Despair Inc. got a satirical 00:16:02.320 --> 00:16:05.600 trademark for the frowny face. Then in 2008, 00:16:05.940 --> 00:16:08.639 a Russian entrepreneur claimed he held the trademark 00:16:08.639 --> 00:16:11.840 for the winking face. Oh, yeah. And he actually 00:16:11.840 --> 00:16:13.659 threatened that companies would have to pay tens 00:16:13.659 --> 00:16:15.480 of thousands of dollars for a license to use 00:16:15.480 --> 00:16:17.830 it. But those attempts generally fail in the 00:16:17.830 --> 00:16:19.970 courts. And the legal mechanism for why they 00:16:19.970 --> 00:16:22.929 fail is really important. You cannot easily copyright 00:16:22.929 --> 00:16:25.509 or trademark a universal linguistic standard. 00:16:25.649 --> 00:16:27.389 Because it belongs to everyone at that point. 00:16:27.690 --> 00:16:30.649 Exactly. Once a symbol like a winking face is 00:16:30.649 --> 00:16:33.090 adopted by the general public for everyday communication, 00:16:33.629 --> 00:16:35.830 it becomes utilitarian. It's a functional piece 00:16:35.830 --> 00:16:38.490 of language. Trademark law is designed to protect 00:16:38.490 --> 00:16:41.529 distinct brand identities, not to let one person 00:16:41.529 --> 00:16:44.139 own the alphabet. Which brings us full circle 00:16:44.139 --> 00:16:48.279 back to Scott Fallman and that $237 ,000 NFT. 00:16:48.679 --> 00:16:51.240 Yeah. You can't own the punctuation itself, but 00:16:51.240 --> 00:16:53.659 you can own the digital artifact of its inception. 00:16:54.080 --> 00:16:56.919 Exactly. The buyer of that NFT purchased the 00:16:56.919 --> 00:16:59.360 digital equivalent of the Rosetta Stone. They 00:16:59.360 --> 00:17:03.000 secured the original 1982 BBS message. Man, when 00:17:03.000 --> 00:17:05.500 you lay it out like that, it completely changes 00:17:05.500 --> 00:17:08.190 how I look at my own keyboard. And for you listening, 00:17:08.509 --> 00:17:10.490 as you go about your day, think about this the 00:17:10.490 --> 00:17:13.269 next time you send a message. Every time you 00:17:13.269 --> 00:17:16.509 are deciding between a simple, noseless smiley, 00:17:17.049 --> 00:17:20.170 an enthusiastic XD, or dramatic orays because 00:17:20.170 --> 00:17:22.809 you spilled your coffee, you are not just typing. 00:17:22.869 --> 00:17:24.769 No, you're really not. You are participating 00:17:24.769 --> 00:17:28.609 in a rich... centuries old lineage. You are part 00:17:28.609 --> 00:17:31.210 of the continuum that stretches from telegraph 00:17:31.210 --> 00:17:34.390 operators in the 1800s straight to a quarter 00:17:34.390 --> 00:17:36.710 million dollar piece of digital history. And 00:17:36.710 --> 00:17:39.390 that leaves us with a critical question to consider. 00:17:39.910 --> 00:17:42.569 We've seen the human need for tone force emoticons 00:17:42.569 --> 00:17:45.990 to evolve from Morse code to text to fully rendered 00:17:45.990 --> 00:17:48.769 3D graphics and multimedia sounds. Right. So 00:17:48.769 --> 00:17:51.269 as we move rapidly into an era of virtual reality 00:17:51.269 --> 00:17:53.789 or even direct brain computer interfaces where 00:17:53.789 --> 00:17:56.329 your exact emotional state theoretically be transmitted 00:17:56.329 --> 00:17:58.970 instantly to another person? What happens to 00:17:58.970 --> 00:18:02.049 the emoticon? Will the text -based smiley eventually 00:18:02.049 --> 00:18:04.890 go extinct as a primitive relic of early computing? 00:18:05.490 --> 00:18:07.789 Or is there something so fundamentally elegant 00:18:07.789 --> 00:18:09.890 about the simplicity of a colon and a bracket 00:18:09.890 --> 00:18:12.349 that we will always need it to convey our truest 00:18:12.349 --> 00:18:14.829 selves? When all the complex graphics and immersive 00:18:14.829 --> 00:18:17.529 tech fall away, maybe all we really want is to 00:18:17.529 --> 00:18:19.829 see a human smile hiding in the punctuation. 00:18:20.329 --> 00:18:22.309 Thanks for joining us on this deep dive. Stay 00:18:22.309 --> 00:18:24.009 curious and we'll see you next time.