Smilies
 

No it doesn't. The smilies are all in the users' browser cache memory when they reply to a message, and thus when a page requires them to be viewed in the future, it calls them from their hard drive rather than from your space on the server.

Also, smilies use very little bandwidth as it is... if you are nearing your limit, I'd suggest cutting the size of the banner image at the top.

I do agree, though, they can get blummin annoying...