If your comment is funny, they're superfluous.

If they're subtle and ironic you're just rubbing the noses of those incapable of detecting it in their inability.

If your comment has animus they have as much effect as whipped cream on feces.

If your comment can be taken as positive or negative, humorous or serious, they serve to illustrate your insecurity and/or your condescension.

and so on.......

Perhaps ... but they mostly serve as an indicator of "tone", which, when considering there are a lot of us whose first language is not English, the subtelties of meaning conveyed through tone sometimes gets lost.

In other words, I may not know what the hell you said, but your dropping a smilie tells me it couldn't have been that bad.

Sometimes when writing the way you speak (like we do on chats or emails or usual forum rantings) you can be misunderstood, because you don't take the time to build complex sentences and context. Smilies are just the equivalent of the real smile or frown you do when you actually speak. I really think they're one of the nice invention of the web era. If not overused, obviously

If I don't understand what the hell you said, I would rather ask for clarification.

Sure, but wouldn't it be better if you don't have to ask ? Or it can be even worse, if you answer in a very angry way because you didn't feel the second degree as you would have felt it in a real conversation ? It already happened to one of the guys I was chatting with, maybe because my English is not perfect (not my native language) I failed to put the exact dose of humor as I planned. This resulted in a flaming war that lasted about 20 messages.

Who knows, maybe our political incomprehensions are the result of a bad usage of smilies ?

What I mean is: you can't really be serious.

Due to anxiety and uncertainty caused by the lack of emoticon associated with your comment, I am frozen and unable to respond to it.

You mind if I copy your last comment to make it a sig ? Very good one.

Hmmm. Okay. Massive and excessive use is awfull. But what do you have against these nice tiny smilies? Let em be. One Smiley I always miss is the one for ironic/sarcasm...

I admit that these have some usefulness in rapid fire circumstances, such as in chat and instant messaging, but even there they are much over used.

You have to see me in real life. I smile all the time...

That brings up another point. If I don't use them, is it a fair presumption that I don't?

..smile all the time that is. Or that your smiley is truly representative?

Godfrey, as far as I could say anything about you.. I think you are the guy who has a dark sarcastic black humor and you don't smile while telling the jokes. just tell them and sip ya beer. I have a lot of friends who are like that

Better to get, and present, a sense of one's nature through expressed thought--at least in this context. And the point is, that, at least in the way they are being used here, they are not adding anything. They are kind of like the nervous laughter that the insecure offten drop at the end of every statement.

No, Funana, I'm not German.

*LOOOL
You don't have to. Or does that mean, that you smile all the time, just like me?

You laughed? How did you come to that? Just a good guess that I was making a joke? If i had attached a smiley to it, it would have be like an instruction--"this is funny. laugh" Much more meaningful to me that you got it on your own.

That you smile all the time is another issue that I won't address. I would talk to a professional about it.

You just missed one thing. I am intelligent. I get the jokes. But I m trying to keep it simple. web 2.0, got that?

Actually Godfrey, you made a good point here. I think we kind of make an internal representation of the personnality of the person we're chatting with, according to his (or his lack of) smilies. Subconsciously, I tend to represent to myself people using a lot of smileys as big cheeks red "bon-vivant" laughers who smile a lot and talk loud, and people who don't use them as deadpan humor persons, like Funana said (whether they sip a beer or not maybe another topic)

And of course, that representation is surely false in most cases.

And that leads me further, to think that in fact that representation is not false at all. It's just a representation of our "virtual avatar", our personality in the cyberworld. Some people have emotionless cold humor avatars, some other have laughing-out-loud avatars. Which may, or may not, coincide with their "real life" identities.

Avatars. Reading too much into them is another problem. Personal mugshots are somewhat representative, if to be believed (I have always avoided using them because of the distracting clamor of females that would result), but others don't mean much to me. I change mine occasionally to avoid being locked into whatever association they might create in some.

Indeed. I used to have Wembley, the Fraggle Rock character.

Must be another TV reference

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraggle_Rock

I loved that as a kid.

I'm really sorry for what the US has wrought in French culture.
First Jerry Lewis, now this.

Actually that was great. But I guess you had your daily Bible lectures instead. I so envy you.

Never even heard of the bible as a child. At least I have no recollection.

At times I use smilies, Mostly when I want to say something without saying it. I use them as a suggestion to a feeling. I don't use them all the time. Maybe 1 in 50 posts. I try to use a character when I post a topic on a message board. I try to choose one that reflects the basic content of the post. I think it helps people decide on what post the read.

Guillaume says: "Sometimes when writing the way you speak (like we do on chats or emails or usual forum rantings) you can be misunderstood, because you don't take the time to build complex sentences and context."

Hell, I WANT to be misunderstood!! It adds to my mystique!