Inevitable Doom

As we are all of course aware, the inevitable downfall of Western Civilization will eventually be attributed to a single defining moment: the invention of AIM. AIM is destroying the youth of today in any number of ways. Corrupting their grammar, their ability to spell, and decaying their minds with an ocean of sappy livejournal-type profile tidbits.

But AIM has recently released a new and more dangerous type of havoc. AOL is now (and I believe it is intentional) trying to destroy children's abilities to recognize even the simplest of facial expressions. For those who don't know how important that skill is, it's one of the bedrocks of our ability to be a social creature. With a future generation of citizens unable to determine their respective moods through visual clues we'll be forced back down the evolutionary ladder. The only reasonable alternative: sniffing one another's asses.

Why does AOL want us all to sniff each other's asses? I don't know. Maybe they have a weird ass smelling fetish. Maybe their asses smell particularly pleasant, and they believe a social hierarchy built upon ass-sniffing will allow them to gain complete world dominance. I can't say.

But I can tell you how AOL is doing this: through the addition of the point-and-click Emoticon menu on AIM.

When I was a kid, if you wanted to let someone know you were happy while on AIM you had to either (a) actually tell them you were happy (the nerve) or (b) carefully craft an artistically brilliant semi-likeness of a smile, like such : ) . Similarly, being cross might be shown through a bent brow as in >: (

But today's kids have no need for such crude, as AIM now provides emoticons you can simply click on and embed in your messages.

Now, I'm not an old curmudgeon who's going to begrudge the youth of today their conveniences and carefree lifestyle (well I am an old curmudgeon, but I choose not to begrudge this particular development). I appreciate the color and life of the new emoticons. But what I do take offense to is the naming of these emoticons, and the obvious misrepresentations they are of human emotions. (Also AIM now calls them "smileys" which I find annoying since only a handful are of smiling faces).

Take for example the emoticon that AIM calls "Undecided". This emotion is represented by the following image


And I think it's pretty clear that this doesn't bear any resemblance to the facial expression taken on by someone who is undecided over an issue. Clearly, this is the face of someone who is constipated. Which is similar to being undecided, except far more painful. So now, thanks to AIM, we're going to have a generation of children who think that constipated people are merely on the fence about where to go for dinner.

But it gets worst. Look at the emoticon AIM calls "Money-Mouth"



Here the actual emotion that is clearly being displayed is "Self-loathing and frustration with myself over having sewn my lips together again, with a hint of hoping someone will call the hospital for me, as I can't speak through these stitches." I think we've all been in that situation a few times, and I know it's going to piss me off when it happens to me next and some confused kid thinks I'm merely being "money-mouth". (And while I'm on this...what the fuck does money-mouth mean anyway? Is it a play on 'put your money where you mouth is'? Is it slang for spoiled? When is this emoticon used by anyone?)

Another misrepresentation is the "kissing" emoticon:


Even the most naive of observers should be able to tell that this emoticon is actually saying "Sucky-sucky five dollar, me love you long time."

AIM strikes at the heart of our civilization with the "Yelling" emoticon, trying to throw off our medical community:


This is obviously a man saying "Help me doctor, I've contracted a rare disease that is slowly turning me into a Japanese Anime character. I fear that if you don't act quickly, everytime I speak my mouth will take up half of my face." And I dread to think of a day when doctors cannot recognize this emotion for the horrible fate that it is, but think only that they are being yelled at for no apparent reason.

Even the less insidious misrepresentations are still drastically off. "Laughing", for example is similar to laughing, but only if you happen to be the Joker from the Batman comics.

And while "surprised"

does indeed seem to indicate surprise, to me it doesn't say "I'm surprised by what you just said" as much as it says "I'm surprised by the fact that I just unexpectedly received an enema."

There is, of course one more misrepresentation, but I believe it to be an honest mistake. This is the "Lips-are-sealed" emoticon:


This emoticon rather obviously made it into our batch by mistake. It should have been in the AIM given to the Predator Species. I believe the emotion represented by this particular Predator Emoticon is "My your acid blood smells lovely, would you like to hunt the Governors of California and Minnesota with me?"