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From: rrd@fc.hp.com (Ray Depew)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Emoticons are out of style.
Date: 17 Oct 1994 22:05:01 GMT

I found this paragraph in Internet World, Nov/Dec 1994. Now admittedly, not everything in IW is well-written, and nothing in IW is edited very well, but I still think there's more than a grain of truth in this paragraph by Andrew Kantor, from page 24:

        Although smileys are still used in abundance in e-mail,
        they have gone out of style on Usenet.  Without them, how can
        you convey feeling in a message?  Through your writing.  Good
        writers can let you know how they feel without using fancy
        characters (you don't see Ray Bradbury using smileys).  But if
        you are only an average writer, you can use angle brackets to
        indicate expression and gesture.
        [example of <g>-type stuff deleted]
        If you don't like bracketing gestures, just be straightforward.

I think that says it all. (And I think that Kantor, or someone on his staff, reads AFU.)