This was mostly used on blogs and in instant messaging chat rooms to emphasize that one was “really happy” (or, in other contexts, really bored or really sad).

For example, the long face (^_^) here which uses lots of underscores was born. Parenthesis were often dropped altogether in these new ‘global’ combination. Once people around the world had mastered the traditionally Japanese smileys (and the popularity of anime went global), we started to see more internationalized text face combinations. This character’s eyes were made from Kannada letters: ಠ_ಠ. More obscure languages, like Kannada from India, allowed for unexpected and particularly specific emotional portrayals. The tilt of the slant above the accented “o” serves to create an entirely opposite effect. Brazilians, for example, figured out that accent marks could be used for a wide range of “eyebrow” emotions, like ò_ó or ó_ò. Once new language keyboards became more available to people around the world, the net began to see really interesting results. These characters come from both Finnish and Japanese. For example, the small katakana “wa” and the accented “o”s make up this kawaii face: ôヮô. Over time, people began to mix characters from languages and new ASCII symbols to make emoticons that could portray things never before seen online. t(o_ot), for example, was used as a way to show the middle finger - it essentially meant “f**k off!” We also began to see ‘vampire’ kaomoji that used commas and periods as ‘snake eyes’ and ‘fangs’ (i.e. Emoticon started to be used to portray gesticulations too. These characters became known as “kirbys,” a nod to Nintendo’s blobby, pink, and oh-so-squish-able mascot. Actually, the ‘three slashes’ made its way back into anime (artists often draw lines on the face of their subjects to show shyness)! Who would have ever thought that something as simple as little kawaii text faces would have so much cultural impact?Īs differenct ASCII characters were created and symbols from other languages were discovered, we began seeing people use things like braces and carets >o^^)> started to spread across IMs and microsites (like MySpace).

Similar to the butt cheek-shaped snot you often see in anime, using /// gave a feeling of blushing. Dashes were used to show contempt (-_-) or sleepiness. Later, when people actually wanted to get across a dead guy, they’d use “X”s, like this face: X_X.Īfter some time, netizens got more creative with their kaomoji. The use of asterisks as eyes was something that you’d really only see in Japan, and was different from the western internet standards at the time (the :-) face). Because characters and computer memory were limited, you’d often only see stuff like (*_*) and other dead-looking faces. Originally, kaomoji weren’t really meant to be cute. These special emoticons are creative faces made from text and symbols taken from multiple languages. Around this time, the first “kaomoji” were created by people in Japan who wanted to express themselves in a more visual way. In roughly 1986, the internet started to spread to Japan.

Kawaii cute anime bee