Punctuation and Emoticons

So you know how people use punctuation to make smiley faces all the time, like so :), etc? It drives me nuts, in an academic sort of way. The other morning I was sitting in bed and thinking about why I hate punctuation smileys. My conclusion was, it's an abuse of the purpose of punctuation. Then I thought about it more. Here is what I thought:
Punctuation was originally invented in order to dictate pause length and breath location to the reader, who naturally was reading out loud, so that he might properly express the intent of the author. If one breathes in the wrong places, or pauses too long, then it disturbs the rhetorical effect, and the oratorical value must be preserved. Honestly, one can't appreciate a stunning speech of Cicero properly if the pauses are done wrong. Have you ever heard somebody reading aloud and they paused in the middle of a clause? Well, maybe you don't notice. It's probably because you have a more charitable soul than me; or just don't care. Anyway, I notice. It drives me crazy. Because that's what the punctuation is for. It tells the reader where to pause and breath so that the ideas are accurately expressed.
This is what I was thinking. Then I thought, oh dear, because punctuation smileys are, in effect, doing the same thing: ensuring that the reader properly understands the intent of the author. In other words, by my own argument, I have no grounds for hating them.
But I do.