The Evolution of Text Emoticons: From 1982 to Modern Internet Culture
Long before graphic smartphone emojis existed, internet users expressed tone and emotion using basic typographical characters. The very first digital emoticon — the sideways smiley :-) and frowning face :-( — was introduced by computer scientist Scott Fahlman on September 19, 1982, on the Carnegie Mellon University computer science bulletin board. Fahlman proposed these markers to distinguish humorous jokes from serious discussions in plain-text online messages.
In the late 1980s and 1990s, Japanese online communities on ASCII NET developed a completely new art form known as Kaomoji (顔文字, literally 'face characters'). Unlike Western emoticons that must be read by tilting your head sideways, Japanese kaomojis are viewed upright and focus heavily on eye expressions, blushing cheeks, and hand gestures using rich Unicode katakana, kanji, and mathematical characters.