:^) / Dorito Face

About

:^), early defined as "broken nose" and jokingly referred as "Dorito face", is a variation of the smiley face emoticon with an upward facing arrow representing a nose.

Origin

The exact origin of the emoticon is unknown. But the earliest archive and explanation of it goes back to 1997. The broken nose emoticon was compiled along within the other various emoticons by James Marshall from The University of Maryland : The Department of Astronomy.^[7]
The original webpage does not exist today, but fortunately it has been achieved on the webside Internet Wayback Machine in 11 December 1997. The article defines the emoticon as seen below.

The definition of the emoticon is also submitted to Urban Dictionary^[1] by user "-" on October 22nd, 2008, defining it as "An emoticon describing the feeling of being happy and having a nose."

Spread

On October 20th, 2013, IGN Forums^[5] member For_I_Am_Cornholio referred to the emoticon as "Dorito face." On May 22nd, 2014, Redditor Captain_Li_Shang replied to a post on the /r/cringepics^[6] subreddit with the message "le dorito face :^)." On June 3rd, a thread about the emoticon was posted on the /s4s/ (shit 4chan says) board on 4chan, to which user Kekkats replied "it's called dorito face" ^[4](shown below).

On June 20th, another Urban Dictionary^[2] entry was submitted, which defined it was a "trolling" or "passive aggressive" emoticon. On June 23rd, League of Legends Forums member Trippeh referred to the emoticon as "le dorito face."

Search Interest

Not available.

External References