Smileys have taken over the world!

I was IM-ing Eric at work today. I use the AOL software itself as opposed to AIM simply because I'm usually checking my email at the same time. In the course of this discussion with Eric, I tried to type (1978). This is not possible in AOL. It comes up as (197 [smiley wearing sunglasses]. Apparently AIM doesn't have this issue unless it comes in from someone on AOL, so you may not be able to verify my tale easily. But smileys have finally taken over the world, superseding actual text.