Asian Smilies

If you have hang in one of those Americans chatrooms, you will see that, albeit being creative in many other areas, Americans are not very creative when it comes to emoticons. There's :) and :(, and every once in a great while, you might see :'(, which I guess represent a tear drop. But when you hang in an Aisan (Chinese) chatroom, there are a lot more varieties. There are ^__^, =), :D, and my favorite XD. I was trying to explain to my white friend MRyan that "XD" is really a smiley, not "X" and "D." His remark? "Aren't those slanted eyes? I'd imagine they being kind of derogatory." *rolls eyes* So I had to scan him this following pic:



And then he was enlighted, "Ooooh. Now I see! it's not slanted eyes. It's squinted!" LOL. I think my white hubby had a hard time grasping that concept too. I had to show him the same picture repeatedly. The side effect was: he ended up associating "thumbs up" with that particular smiley--which if you look carefully, the guy wasn't even holding up his thumb in the picture ! XD