Here?s a report <
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/11/in-1982-a-physics-joke-gone-wrong-sparked-the-invention-of-the-emoticon/>
on the precise origins of the use of the character sequences ?:-)? and
?:-(?, not quite to denote happiness/unhappiness as they are commonly
used today, but to distinguish jokes from serious postings.
The discussion happened back in September 1982, on a bulletin-board
system running on a DECsystem-20 at Carnegie-Mellon University. It
came about as a result of a joke posting being taken way too seriously
(of course ...).
To add to the interest, there is more than personal testimony to back
up the record: original backup tapes of bboard postings from that time
were dug up, and the actual transcript of those discussions was
extracted, and are now available online <
https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~sef/Orig-Smiley.htm>.
--- PyGate Linux v1.5.1
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)