It's a brilliant statement of symbolic simplicity. The colon at the end, looks just that... until you start to have doubts... Is it the beginning of a consecutive smiling emoticon, which perhaps has assumed a thought process of its own? Has it chosen not to smile? To set itself apart from the sheep mentality of its predecessors, whilst at the same time, blithely remaining in line.
Perhaps the smilies represent a sea of cheerful, but lost souls, themselves looking out to sea. To distant horizons. Horizons that perhaps appear beyond reach. Unattainable. Lands of the lost. Dreams. Nightmares maybe? They could be us. Each and every one of us, trapped in a forum, slipping to a disastrous end under the command of a smiling lunatic. Sliding away, but smiling nonetheless. Smiling in adversity. The spirit still there.
