Oh, what have they done to the smiley face?

One of my home town of Worcester's many contributions to the greater good is the smiley face. 

It was "invented" by one Harvey Ball, a graphic artist who designed it as a morale-booster for the State Mutual Life Assurance Company in 1963. Ball, who never trademarked his creation, was paid $45 for his freelance work, which took him about 10 minutes to come up with. (I just saw on Wikipedia that Harvey Ball was a graduate of South High School, where my father - who was a few years older than Ball - also went to school. Yay, South High!)

Anyway, I started high school - not at South - in 1963, and somewhere during my high school years, the smiley face started becoming a thing. A classmate who likely had a parent who worked at State Mutual got a hold of a bunch of the little tin smiley face pins and gave me one. Which I often wore tacked onto my hunter-green uniform jumper. 

An aside on State Mutual: A decade later, home from my long European travel adventure and not yet moved back into Boston, I had a Kelly Girl job there. My task was to sit at a rotary typewriter and type the letter B on a multi-carbon form. All day, everyday. I worked with a handful of other "girls" in a little pod that was separated out with file cabinets from the huge open-concept office floor, one of a number of similar pods, chocked full of "girls," that here and there broke up the giant floor. The only men on the floor worked in offices off to the side.

Anyway, on Christmas Eve, our boss announced that we were in for a treat. Mr. Big - the company president - and a few of his minions, were going to be stopping by.

When she spotted them nearing, she hissed "Sit up straight, girls." 

Mr. Big stuck his head into our little pod and, without making eye contact, waved his hand vaguely our way and said "Merry Christmas, girls."

After he left our boss sighed and said, "Wasn't that wonderful? He doesn't have to do that for us."

In case you were wondering why morale at State Mutual Life Assurance needed any boosting. 

We were not, however, issued smiley face buttons. He may have left us some of those nasty red and green sprinkled sugar cookies. 

Over the years, the smiley face has become ubiquitous.

I was neither a lover nor a hater. It did make me smile, so more of a love, I guess. And I was tickled that it came from Worcester. And really tickled when, a few years ago, the city's new AAA Red Sox team, the Woo Sox, adopted Smiley as a mascot. (Of course I have a smiley-face Woo Sox cap.)

And, of course, once the smiley face (in all of its manifestations) became an emoji thing to add emphasis and color to your texts, I became a pretty regular user, frequently punctuating my texts with some smiley face variant. 

Turns out the OG image doesn't necessarily spread tidings of comfort and joy. Not to everyone out there, anyway. When it comes to the young folks, Gen Z:

Instead of conveying happiness, the grinning yellow face is now seen as dismissive, passive-aggressive, or straight-up sarcastic.

And if you’re sending it to younger colleagues or friends, it could be rubbing them the wrong way.

Hafeezat Bishi, a 21-year-old intern, recently told the Wall Street Journal that she was taken aback when her older co-workers used the smiley emoji in emails and texts.

“I had to remember they are older, because I use it sarcastically,” Bishi said, explaining that she often views the emoji as conveying a “side-eye smile” rather than genuine enthusiasm. (Source: NY Post)

Who knew? Not I. 

When it comes to communications, every generation does its own thing. And Gen Z is certainly welcome to theirs. (Oh, you kids!) But I kinda sorta feel a bit sad that they're changing the meaning of Worcester's own smiley face. 

Personally, I will continue to use it to convey happiness. Let others interpret it as they may.

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Image source: Wikipedia.