Today, we’re celebrating a special anniversary that will make you 😄 – the birth of the smilicon! Can you believe it’s been 41 years since Professor Scott Fahlman of Carnegie Mellon gifted us with the first ever emoticon?
Back on the 19th of September 1982, in a digital world without emojis, GIFs, or Bitmojis, Professor Fahlman made history by posting this little gem to a university bulletin board:
:-)
He even gave us its grumpy cousin:
:-(
Look at them sideways, and voila, instant emotion!
For years, these cheeky characters spread across the web like a hilarious joke, but their origin story remained as elusive as the punchline to a dad joke. It wasn’t until the 10th of September 2002, twenty years later, when the original message was unearthed from backup tape. Like a digital time capsule, it brought us back to the dawn of the smiley.
Professor Fahlman saved us countless awkward moments of misunderstanding on the internet by marking what’s funny and what’s not. We owe our LOLs, ROFLs, and 😂 to him.
Let’s celebrate this day with a 😄, a 😂, or even a 🥳. And remember, it’s always more economical to mark things that are NOT jokes. So if you’re not feeling the humour today, feel free to use a :-( After all, a smilicon is worth a thousand words.
#SmiliconDay #EmojiHistory #DigitalMilestones
