Proper etiquette in the digital realm

I firmly believe that one of the most annoying things in the world is when people make faces out of punctuation. Like:
:)
:(
;)
and so on and so forth. I mean, I should hope that I'd be able to tell the expression on your face without you having to use these primitive sketches. Sure, they may have been cool the first time someone figured out that they could be made, but I don't really see how they add to discourse in contemporary discourse.

Now emoticons are a completely different matter. Those I can stand. I think a properly placed emoticon can enhance a conversation quite nicely. And I'm a little disappointed that you can't add those to posts on blogger. There is, however, a threshold that, if crossed, makes them more annoying than their primitive counterparts. I propose the following rules for usage of emoticons:

1. If in a messenger conversation, emoticons should be limited to use once in every four posts, unless the emoticons are the cool ones, like the umbrella, tree, rainbow, etc. In this instance, they can and should be used as often as applicable, due to the misguided assumption that many hold that they serve little to no purpose, and are thus regularly overlooked.
2. If in an e-mail, once per paragraph is the threshold. Typically, it is most proper to avoid emoticons in e-mail, but, if used, should be done sparingly.
3. If in a blog post or similar format (assuming that is possible to use them in the program), a similar standard to that of e-mail should be applied, with one exception: if the title of the post contains an emoticon, the rest of the post should not contain any such images. This is considered overkill.

As with all rules, there are some exceptions that can be applied, but must be dealt with on a case-by-case basis. One such exception is if the purpose of the post/message/e-mail is to really annoy the reader. In this case, however, I'm not sure why you wouldn't just use the punctuation faces, because they are more annoying to begin with. Perhaps a combination of the two could create a potent combination. I don't know, play around with it, but the general rule as far as exceptions to the rules go is to use your best judgment.

That's all for now! Have a great day!:)