This is my most despised emoticon.
I can never tell what it means. Here’s some ways I’ve seen it used, with as much context as I can give it to make sense.
Sometimes it’s clearly positive like:
“Super wacky fun time!! Woooooo!!!!! =P My tongue is hanging out because that’s what happens in super wackkkky fun time!!.”
and sometimes pretty clearly negative like:
Why didn’t you invite me to your party, Chris. =P. I am quite angry about this and I’m sticking my tongue out at you.
or subtly different:
Why didn’t you invite me to your party, Chris. Just kidding!!! Passive aggressive tongue!!! =P
or the definitely negative:
Uhmmm, nice try at building a CSS framework butt chump. =P
or the just straight up confusing:
Hey Chris =P
Is it just me? While I kinda like emoticons in general, I avoid this one because it’s seemingly so ambiguous. I worry someone will think I’m mad at them when I’m going for “wacky.”
Agreed! Inflection is totally lost.
Also, +1 for the phrase “butt chump”.
It may be I’ve got it totally wrong here, but IMHO, I though =P Always was a wacky positive. Maybe people started misplacing it, like what happened at a national social network over here. Hyves, a Dutch copy of Facebook, has a means of updating your status like so:
What are you doing @ the location you’re doing that.
However, people misuse it like so:
Had a blast with my special friend @ looking forward to her cooking
People apparantly still don’t know why the at sign was invented. I think this may be true for how you come across the =P emoticon. What do you think?
like Jan, i always thought of “:P” as being a Whacky sort of face not meant for anything negative.
I too have have things similar to that which really annoy me mostly which appear in MMOs (Massively Multiplayer Online Games) when people use characters like “ß” in place of a B, when really its a german character for the sound “SS” and ü or ö to replace “u” and “o”. They think it makes them seem clever but really it just makes them look like ignorant morons.
Yeah,
the =P is quite a weird one. I personally interprete it like it’s a mocking emoticon.
But let me present another ambiguous one: the ;-). I can never tell what it means, because a lot of people seem to use it without thinking much about it. Is it used to depict a harmless little joke, is it being used for flirting purposes or is it a sign of cendescending attitude? Who knows.
When I was chatting more, I used to suggest to people overusing the ;) that they might want to go see a doctor, because their eye is twitching all the time. It turned out that most people didn’t really know why they used it so much, it was “out of habit”. Ohwell. :)
I’ve always looked at the “:P” emoticon as being a “silly” type gesture. Like a “just kidding” or “check me out, I’m awesome” type effect. It is pretty ambiguous though, you’re right :P
If you really want to mess with people, use the winky sad face. ;(
Didn’t realize you play SC2, I just saw your post about poor mac pro performance until you upgraded your video card. Would you know if they have anything for Macbook pros?
My fav CSS teacher from css-tricks also plays sc, how crazy :D