The problem is that it's not always the quality of the joke. A lot of face-to-face interaction, beyond the words spoken, is the tonal inflections, gestures, facial expressions, and such that cannot be expressed in a purely text-based medium. Just pick up any book where two characters have a conversation and look at how much of the text is what they're saying, and how much is the narrator talking about what they're doing while saying it, or adjectives about the tone of voice they're speaking in.
Yeah, that's what makes writing well so goddam hard. The best writers can do a great job of communicating without resorting to graphical representations of the intent of the text. I just wish I were better at it.
But the best writers aren't throwing out 60 short stories before lunch. They also have an audience who will actually read all the words.
When communicating via email, brevity us crucial. If I can drop two sentences by inserting a ;), you better believe I will. To not do so would be disrespecting the recipient's time so I can hone my writing skills (or lack thereof, in my case) at her expense.
Yeah, emoticons are efficient. I just feel like a chump using them, like using a megaphone in a restaurant. It works, but everyone else thinks, "Why can't that jerk just speak clearly in a normal voice?"
...he said, emphatically.