“8===D Head”

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania - As to why anyone would want to claim credit for the emoticon “:-)” is beyond reasonable thinking but Carnegie Mellon University professor Scott E. Fahlman said he was the first to use it in an email. In an email dated September 19, 1982, Fahlman wrote:

I propose the following character sequence for joke markers: Read it sideways.

I thought Carnegie Mellon held some prestige. I guess I was wrong since you have a professor claiming to be the first person to use smiley faces on the keyboard. Fahlman went on to say:

I’ve never seen any hard evidence that the sequence was in use before my original post, and I’ve never run into anyone who actually claims to have invented it before I did. But it’s always possible that someone else had the same idea — it’s a simple and obvious idea, after all.

The idea of someone wanting to claim the idea of smiley faces is almost as absurd as someone wanting to claim to be “the most downloaded woman on the Internet.” Oh wait. Then it is almost as absurd as someone wanting to claim to be the first person to use the term “information superhighway.” Nevermind. Cheap shots at Al Gore and Cindy Margolis aside, perhaps Fahlman should create a signature emoticon that best expresses who he is, an ass.

I like them backwards