I have been thinking lately about eyebrows with emoticons. Once I started (attempting to come up with a way to indicate sarcasm via a raised eyebrow) I found that they’re incredibly expressive, possibly more so than their standard counterparts. A few examples:

ô_ō raised eyebrow (sarcasm/ dry joke)

ô_ô surprise

ò_ó anger

ó_ò sadness/pitiful eyes

So much is possible with different combinations of characters! And I have certainly gotten better at knowing where the special characters are on my keyboard as a result of this experiment. Eyes I still haven’t found a use for:

õ_õ (wigly eyebrows!)

ö_ö (wide awake with eyelashes?)

ơ_ỏ (no idea here, really)

ɵ_ɵ  (half-lidded eyes?)

And a final result of the experiment: attempting to mark every sarcastic comment I made with a single raised eyebrow lead me to the conclusion that almost everything I say over IM is sarcastic. This is about roughly equal to the fact that I’m just about always sarcastic when I speak. No wonder the whole “obviously lying voice” debacle of a few years ago, where everyone complained that they couldn’t recognize when I was making shit up, was such an issue–the frequency with which I say the opposite of what I mean to make a point is ridiculously high.