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As a freelancer I recently got in contact with a russian agency on LinkedIn. This person used the 'russian-style smile face' ) quite a lot.
In order to sympathize with this person I was tempted to use it too. Would it be okay to use it as a non-russian-speaking person, or does it seem unauthentic?
I'm failing to see how this is about Russian language but rather about common sense and etiquette. Basically someone chatting with you used emoticons and that's completely fine to use emoticons in turn. It's not that like this person will be like: "How dare you!".
:)is that:is on theжkey in Russian keyboard, which makes:)being used by Russians noticeably less frequent than the rest of the world. If anything, you may notice Russians sometimes use=)when you'd expect a:). That also warrants why a simple)is used instead of a:). As you can see, this way to write a smiley is originated in Russian typing and caused by saving time switching between English and Russian characters. I guess that as a primarily English/German (?) keyboard user switching from:)to)is not really something that's expected from you.