When did the "wink" become the international symbol for "just kidding"?

Excellent question, Jae - I'm glad you asked, my Apache friend. Let us think about the wink for a moment, before we examine the current use of the delightful twitch in today's world of acronyms, abbreviations, texts and IM's.

I am nearly certain, though I could find nothing in my diligent research to confirm this, that the wink became a method of communication, like hand gestures and the spoken word, by one of two ways: Someone either had an uncontrollable facial tic, or a gnat flew into their eye while in the midst of a conversation. Either way, there must have been a serendipitous connection between what was being said and the wink being construed as an intimate confirmation of the statement. There is also the possibility that the wink may have first arisen in a situation where someone had to blink, but did not trust the person with whom he was conversing enough to close both eyes. I have been in this situation and it is most uncomfortable. Again, however, given the right timing and context, the wink could be useful and the need to blink camouflaged by the conversation altogether.

The meaning of the wink has changed over the ages. For instance, if David Niven winked at you over a martini, he was most likely subtly suggesting that you meet him upstairs in his swanky suite and lose the bloomers somewhere along the way, please. If Paul McCartney winked at you with his chipmunk smile, he was probably being cheeky and disarming you after delivering a pointed verbal barb. And meet him upstairs in his swanky suite and for the love of God, lose the bloomers somewhere along the way, please.

I believe that the wink became the international symbol for "just kidding" about the same time we as human beings began to lose our ability to suss out subtlety and sarcasm in conversation. As we move away from face-to-face interaction, our instinct for person-to-person interpretation is being destroyed by several factors. We look at our telephones or computer monitors and communicate in the cut and dried world of the written word. This leaves very little room for the pauses, inflections and tonal changes that bring life to our language. What we read on any page must be conveyed to reflect our precise meaning through punctuation, word-choice and a somewhat knowledgeable use of phrasing and sentence construction. All other poorly-written or overly-abbreviated communication is open for a wide range of interpretation and this has necessitated the invention of symbols to convey that we have gotten the joke ("LOL") or have even made a joke (;-)). What better symbol to show that we are just kidding than the wink, especially since it's right there on our keyboard, with no more effort than a quick series of key-strokes.

LOL.

Good day, Sir.