Smiley Face Turns 30 Today

Just thirty years ago, you had to use actual facial expressions to convey your emotions. On this very day in 1982 at 11:44 a.m. a Carnegie Mellon computer geek Scott Fahlman had a flash of genius and created the first ever smiley face, curing social ineptitude of the computer-bound around the world.

The emoticon trend spread at a lightning speed, sometime during the 90s working its way into the lives of every technology capable human on the planet. The rest… is history.

So today, we celebrate the smiley face: Simplifying morning after texts, passive aggressive tweets and awkward first email-introductions since 1982. Like a boss.

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