Tone of voice won't sound right to everyone. No matter what.

Hello again ladies and gents! Welcome back to this wandering circus. When I read the first comment above, I could only smile at the tone of the author's writing. I tend to agree with him on some level about the use of smileys. I always prefer it when people actually understand and grasp the concept of my jokes and/or snippy comments. Barring my own capricious wishes however, Stephenson's tone of voice when reading this particular entry makes me smile exorbitantly! Perhaps it merely calls to my own (sometimes acidic) sense of humor, I don't know.

The tone that Stephenson uses to convey his point really emphaisizes his belief that the smiley emoticons are useless and that people simply need to a) write better, or b) try to be smart enough to understand satire or leave it well enough alone. Even in the later comment that Stephenson provides at the end of his original entry, he utilizes a definitive tone to his writing. It is considerably different from the harsh denouncement that he gave before, but it still contains an underlaying sense of playfulness as evidenced by: "So, when I re-examine what Fahlman and I have written about smileys, I end up agreeing with Fahlman, and thinking that this Stephenson kid must be living in some kind of fantasy world." I find this an added bonus in Stephenson's favor; the fact that he can recognize key facts about his past writing, learn from them, and actually admit that he was wrong. Sometimes I wonder if we don't see that enough in today's society.

Here come the PONIES!