h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

have you ever come across the emoticons:
^_^ and ;_;

Apparently, according to http://www.livescience.com/health/070510_facial_culture.html, these are the Japanese emoticons for and
They're different 'cos the Japanese concentrate on the eyes for emotion and not the mouth. (so it says in the piece).

I've never come across these emoticons before. Anyone else come across them?
Or know of other non-us/uk/eu emoticons?

My son uses them, don't know how many more there are, though.

your son uses Japanese emoticons?

I've seen him use the first one a lot - had to ask what it stood for.

I've used o_O as being I hope I was right!

wouldn't o_O be a Paris Hilton smiley?

Or me since I have a bit of a squint too. I'd have thought it would be more O_O though.

B'El, why does he use ^_^ instead of ?

To be honest, I have no idea, I never asked him.

fair enough!

Interesting that he does though.

I wonder if there are other culturally specific ones as well?

They're pretty much based on Japanese cartoon expressions (cartoons being very popular in Japan). If you grab the nearest western anime fan you'll probably find they use them too.

Blues? KerrAvon? you there?

and in a serendipitous turn of events, I was just looking for a researcher on here that I know, and who is a youngster, when I found that they and one of their friends had been posting using both ^_^ and O_O ! And I know that the person who used them is a fan of at least some Japanese telly in that they watch that yu-gi-oh thing (or however it is spealt).

Maybe it's a generational thing as well as an interest thing. There's certainly more Japanese telly available to todays youths.

spelled

I've asked my son, and he doesn't know where they come from. He just uses them because everybody does.

0_o is weird, I think.
I regularly use T_T for

He knows a lot of people who use them?
I like them because not many people use them, I have an obsession with uniqueity. And inventing words, evidently.

So we now have
^_^ - happy face
;_; - sad face (although I could also see this a crying)
O_o - weird
o_O - weirdly opposite ()
T_T - cry

hmm. Interesting. I suppose that something like -_0 would be a winkeye?

I've heard of ^_^ specifically being referred to as "anime smiley".

And to add to the above list I've also seen these used.

<_< and >_> (the direction varies).

I'm not quite sure what they're meant to express. Maybe "I'm watching you" or something as they seem to be used in response to something said.

I've seen both types used all the time. I thought they were just interchangeable. But then, I'm a fan of Japanese anime and regularly frequent areas of the internet where other anime people are found.

my company uses a form of instant messenger and I'm online to Koreans all day. (so, I guess these are more like Asian smilies then, since my Chinese colleagues use them also)

I use *^^* for
^^ - for and

>_< for

but my favourite is the cat =^..^=

I'm quite impressed with rabbits.
(\"/)
(+.+)
(")(")