Smile!

You see the problem with Blog O’Sphere is that, like email, it is just so easy to be taken out of context. You can say something that is meant to be droll or humorous but unless you are a master at the “Smileys” someone is bound to take you up the wrong way. And sometimes, that ain’t funny! The problem is bad enough when you lash off a quick blog post, it is ten times worse when you are commenting. At least with your own post, it’s your own words that get misinterpreted. And probably no one even reads them. With comments, however, the original poster recognises that the premeditated exchange gives him/her ample reason to take umbrage.

I battle daily with the no-time-to-blog-properly-so-should-I-not-blog-atall dilemma. The particular problem being that if I waited until I had the time to blog properly, I’d never blog. But of course all those spelling mistakes must drive folk wild. A wise and quite aggressive (is there any other type?) man once said, “Fail to Prepare ; Prepare to Fail ;-)”. I know that is what he meant to say because Mr Keane was born with his tongue in his cheek. However Tom Humphries is clearly no master of the smilies either. Or perhaps it just got lost in translation as this pearl of wisdom was communicated by telephone from Saipan. No doubt the much softer line “Agh, sure Michael mo chroí, sure you aren’t even Irish ;-)” was cruelly twisted by a subeditor in the Irish Daily Mirror to that which had devastating consequences for Irish soccer. On three occasions during the England v Ireland rugby match this weekend, the fourth official laced his line “Of course it was a try” with several ironic smilies but none of them managed to make it to make it to the referee.

Who knows what other lines have been distorted by the lack of a good Smiley? :-)

Photo : Wikipedia.