On 19 September, 1982, Scott Fahlman, a computer science research assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University, posted a message on the university’s bulletin board software that would later shape the way people communicated online.
His proposal: Use 🙂 and 🙁 as markers to separate jokes from serious comments.
While Fahlman describes himself as “the inventor … or at least one of the inventors” of what would later be called the smiley face emoticon, the whole story tells of something much more interesting than a single genius moment.
The whole episode began three days earlier when computer scientist Neal Swartz posed a physics problem to colleagues on Carnegie Mellon’s “Bboard,” an early online message board. The discussion thread was exploring what happens to objects in a freely falling elevator, and Swartz presented a specific scenario involving a burning candle and a drop of mercury.
That evening, computer scientist Howard Gale announced “Warning!” responded with a ridiculous message titled. He claimed that an elevator had been “contaminated with mercury” due to a physics experiment and that there had been “some minor damage by fire”. Despite a clarification in the post calling the warning a joke, some people took it seriously.
This incident sparked immediate discussion on how to prevent such misunderstandings and the “flame wars” (heated debates) that can arise from ill intentions.
Fahlman later wrote in a retrospective post published on his CMU website, “This problem led some of us to suggest (only half-seriously) that perhaps it would be a good idea to clearly mark posts that should not be taken seriously.” “After all, when using text-based online communication, we lack the body language or tone-of-voice cues that convey this information when talking in person or on the phone.”
On September 17, 1982, the day after the miscommunication on the CMU board, Swartz made the first concrete proposal: “Maybe we should adopt the tradition of putting a star
In the subject area of any notice that should be taken as a joke.
Within a few hours, several Carnegie Mellon computer scientists considered alternative proposals. Joseph Ginder suggested using % instead of *. Anthony Stentz proposed a subtle system: “How about using * for good jokes and % for bad jokes?” Keith Wright supported the ampersand (&), arguing that it “sounds funny” and “sounds like fun.” Leonard Hammy suggested {#} because “it looks like two lips with teeth visible between them.”
Meanwhile, some Carnegie Mellon users were already using their own solutions. A group on the Gandalf Vax system later revealed that they were using \__/ as “universally known as the smiley” to mark jokes. But it clearly did not go beyond that local system.
winning formula
Two days after Swartz’s initial proposal, Fahlman entered the discussion with his now famous post: “I propose that the following character sequences be used for joke markers: 🙂 Read it from the edge.” He added that 🙁 can be used in serious messages, noting, “Given current trends, maybe we should flag things that aren’t jokes.”
What made Fahlman’s proposal successful was not that he invented the concept of joke markers – Swartz did that. It wasn’t like he invented smile symbols at Carnegie Mellon, because \__/ already existed. Rather, Fahlman synthesized the best elements from the ongoing discussion: the simplicity of single-character propositions, the visual clarity of face-like symbols, the principle of sideways reading indicated by Hemi’s {#}, and a complete binary system that covers both humor 🙂 and seriousness :-(.