he/him 
The easiest way to be as smug as possible is to add a nose to your emoticons :-)
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I'm 26 and when I was a kid I remember calling them smileys.
Ya’ll are just confirming my comment that smiley is the kid word for emoticon
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Old black and white Nokia phones didn't have emojis, they had smileys, and they were called smileys in phone's interface. Unless kids designed those phones...
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Looks like the term “smilies” is due to the “The Smiley Company” who forced phone manufacturers to license the right. Not exactly making a compelling case her for ubiquity and standards. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Smiley_Company …
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Smiley predates emoticons. And cell phones. And the www. It literally started with :) or :-) embedded in Text. To make a "smiley". And grew from there. There were no "images". They definitely weren't started by preteen "kids". I remember that term 30yrs ago. In adulthood.
Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
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