A real conversation today, only partly paraphrased:
Co-worker: So, Jon, you're the expert in this kind of thing. A colon and an end bracket is a smiley, right? (She meant "end parenthesis", but I knew what she meant.)
Me: That would be, um, yeah, a smile.
Co-worker: Ah, okay.
Me: As opposed to, you know, the other "bracket", which would be a frown, 'cause the mouth goes the other way. (Said as if it was something I expected she already knew, especially since I really thought she did at the time.)
Co-worker: A mouth?
Jon: Well, yeah, what else would that be?
I can't remember the text that follows but then there was the sudden realization that she never knew all this time that a smiley is a literal rotation of some text characters that becomes a pictogram of a face. I was rather amazed as I know she's seen this kind of thing in her emails for years. I know for a fact she knew what a smiley was when she asked me a similar question four or five years ago, but apparently she saw colons and parentheses and made a connection to them being expressions but never actually saw that they were faces. I'm a very visually-oriented person and to me it's so strange that anyone computer-literate could go this long without actually seeing the face; I don't even have to turn my head to imagine what I think should be obvious. It's two dots and a curved line. Two eyes and a mouth. Seriously. Facepalm moment.
She wasn't angry at my expression of disbelief (please tell me I'm not the only one that would be shocked given the circumstances), but then she asked me, as if it was on the same level, if I knew the average for punters (her son plays university football).
Jon: That's not even a fair comparison. I wouldn't know that because that's a fact that either you know or don't know. In the case of this emoticon, what it means is already there in front of me. You just tilt your head and look at it to "decipher" it.
Another co-worker: But how would she know to look at it that way?
Me: HOW COULD YOU NOT SEE IT???
Yes, neither co-worker spends a lot of time on the computer at home, and when they do, they're not going on forums using 1337sp33k. But I would've thought everyone would be familiar with the most common emoticon of them all, a basic smiley, and the logic as to why it's considered a smiley. They're giving the Internet community too much credit if they think emoticons, slang terms, and "leetspeek" are made with no basis at all in something.
I don't know if this is more or less bizarre than my "aunt" (not really) who uses a computer at work but doesn't know how to operate an ATM, or that guy I met while on jury duty who claimed to be a gamer but didn't know who Mario is. There are some strange disconnects here.
It's not like I did a literal facepalm at that moment, and quickly tried to make it clear I wasn't being judgmental. But it still baffles me. Anyone else experience situations like this?
