Scott E. Fahlman proposed using :-) and :-( to mark jokes and not-jokes respectively in internet posts in 1982, and they (and lots of variations) have been in use ever since. IBM's Codepage 437 character set (as used by the original PC) had two dedicated smiley characters even before that.
There was no golden age of the internet where there were no emoticons.
Old internet days you went to a site to make them for you and you copy pasted them into some stupid AOL/ICQ chat , and then later on for me irc. Now they are part of a lot of clients UI.
(⌐■_■)