AIM smilies of the standard smiley kind always look like turtles or something, as though they have a nose, rather like a cross between a turtle and Mickey Mouse. It's ugly, and normal, nonpaying users can't change the smiley scheme—and even if they could, most would still have the "standard" smilies 'cause they're uninterested in figuring out how to get rid of the nag windows, ads, and sounds, much less changing anything about its appearance.

Even if I were to change my personal smiley schema, it would be utterly pointless, apart from the simple aesthetic convenience of not having to see those awful caricatures, since everyone else would still see the ugly version, thereby blurring my meaning. Hence why I always write out smilies, i.e. ": )", to avoid that ugliness.

---