Smileyface means 'i'm a moron'

A shocking controversy threatens Princeton much like an asteroid threatened the earth in 'Apocalypse,' or 'Armageddon' or whatever that movie was called.

What is this controversy? Is it workers' rights? Come on. Race relations? Nope. A new residential college? Really, is that the best you can come up with?

No, the controversy that threatens to rock Princeton's campus even harder than Van Halen in their heyday is the popular usage of emoticons. What's an emoticon? Here are a few: :-), :-(, :->, the list goes on. You've seen these things in an e-mail or on Instant Messenger. You've probably used them once or twice. And you're a horrible, terrible person for it; to show how awful you are, let us conduct a thought experiment. Imagine someone who puts a PUDS worker in a headlock, makes him eat his paycheck and then sets him on fire. Breed this theoretical individual with Imelda Marcos and then let the ghost of Jeffrey Dahmer raise the kid in a morgue. This kid will grow up to be almost as awful a person and only slightly less of an affront to human dignity as you. Of course, I'm exaggerating a little; you'll still be about a million times worse.

To be fair, I must admit that there seems to be a decent argument in favor of emoticon usage. After all, using emoticons gives people a very convenient means for expressing their emotions. For example, if my friend Agnes were to IM me with the message that she's not coming to my Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Costume Ball Extravaganza 2001 (it's next Thursday, if you're interested), I would be able to express how deeply upset I was just by typing a frowny-face. When Agnes saw how distraught I was, there's no way she'd ditch my party. In the end, then, everybody wins: I get what I want, and Agnes gets to go to the rockingest cartoon-themed party since the Pokemon Pajama Parade my roommate threw last year. So emoticons might have their advantages.

Nevertheless, I am forced to argue that using an emoticon one time is approximately equivalent to sticking a screwdriver into your brain and then jiggling it around for 10 minutes. Now, let me preface the following discussion with a slight explanation. I am not an exceptionally intelligent person; in fact, if you're able to withstand laughing uncontrollably at the biological classification, Homo erectus, odds are you're smarter than me. Nor have I ever contributed anything of value to the English language — although I am toying with the idea of a post-modernist detective novel centered around Buddy from "Charles In Charge." So the point is, please don't take my indictment of emoticon usage to mean that I'm gracing you with the thoughts I have from up here in the saddle of my intellectual and/or literary high horse.

Instead, consider what a danger emoticons must pose if even a semi-literate mouth-breather like me can see that using them makes you an idiot. While there are many reasons why this is so, one stands out as far and away the most important: Emoticons are a gateway to other and greater sins. Just as smoking pot inevitably leads to selling your roommate's textbooks for smack, emoticon use virtually guarantees the utter degeneration of society. After one has 'experimented' with emoticons, casual usage of phonetic spellings, like "c u l8r" for "see you later" are soon to follow, a sure sign that one won't remember abstruse and abstract concepts like how to dial a telephone number. Yet the effects of this self-inflicted brain damage don't stop there: Soon the individual's articulatory ability degenerates to the point where communication is only possible through grunting, and swiftly thereafter the individual even forgets how to grunt. And, man, if you think you can forget how to grunt and still remember how to control your bodily functions, I've got some sad news for you.

And yet some might argue that this is a personal — and not a societal — problem. But how can we possibly expect society to function if its citizens aren't even smart enough either to make inarticulate noises or to hold it in until they get to the bathroom?

The easy answer, of course, is robots, but let me ask you this: If everybody's stupid, who will build these robots? So do society and yourself a favor: Next time you're having a conversation on Instant Messenger and the person you're talking with says something upsetting, don't reply with an angry-face. Instead, act like a rational adult and bottle those feelings up, so you can take them out on someone else at a later time. Let us remember the words of the Neanderthal chieftan Thog, who said — well, he didn't ever say anything because Neanderthals weren't smart enough to talk, and look where that got them. Must humanity inflict the same fate on itself? Phil Lerch is a politics major from Elysburg, PA. He can be reached a prlerch@princeton.edu.