Emotes FTW!

Since the day a squirrel erroneously exposed himself to me, I have been fascinated by said creatures. Not in the academic sense where I would seek out information regarding the furry bastards, but more to thye extent I constantly emote throwing them at people. This got me thinking, where do emotes really come from? Everyone has their own special system utilizing smileys and emotes, and all of those same people have different meanings for them. LMFAO, LOL, are just a couple classics. I would love to meet the first person in some age old chatroom who thought to him or herself, "hey I dont want to type laughs out loud anymore, Eureka! I shall henceforth type it as LOL! And i'm quite bleary about having to spell out laughing my fucking ass off, so that shall be LMFAO." I have since decided that I shall begin a course of seeking out information regarding peoples emotes and attempt to make a record of it, I say attempt as I will most likely find something else shiny upon this trodden path and scurry off in a new direction with some other equally pointless quest of knowledge. That is all. Good day.