The funny thing is that, technically, the original emoticon in question was actually in reply to someone else's post not his!

Not to mention the entire reason emoticons were invented are to provide a "fun", "sarcastic", and/or "humorous" way to convey a message... even an "up yours" emoticon would be a sarcastic up yours...

So given this, how does nothing more than an emoticon posted in reply to someone else cause a person to launch into a rage? And for said person to then get so angry at everyone's shock and disbelief that he then loses all control of his temper over it?

I've been using (and in some cases running and moderating) forums for nearly 20 years now and while I've seen some pretty crazy stuff I have never seen anything like that before...