

Facebook’s Laughable Data Shows ‘LOL’ Isn’t Funny Anymore - montrealer
http://www.wsj.com/articles/facebooks-laughable-data-shows-lol-isnt-funny-anymore-1439238707?mod=LS1

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soylentcola
Just anecdotally, many people I know never really used "LOL" unless we were
being sarcastic. It always reminded me of the early/mid 90's when "The
Internet!" started getting a lot of press and there were articles all over the
place (in print, natch) about how to talk in "internet speak".

They'd list all of these abbreviations like "LOL" and "ROFL" among others that
struck us, as likely dickish teenagers who considered ourselves savvy due to
having used BBSes and IRS, like a signifier of "AOL-speak" used by the
inexperienced noobs who learned about "The Internet!" from a magazine article.

Probably an unfair assessment and not really flattering considering we had
only been using this stuff since the mid/late 1980s at best, but such is the
folly of youth ;) Still, I never really lost that association of "LOL" with
the annoyance I felt back at age 17 or 18 when "AOL kiddies" started showing
up on IRC and MUDs.

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msellout
I've found a significant number of older people think "LOL" is an abbreviation
for "lots of love" or "lots of laughs" rather than "laughing out loud".

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hayksaakian
where does this come from? what's the origin of the "lots of love" meaning?

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leni536
I think it was a prank for teaching people the wrong meaning. Besides this
joke site is quite funny about it:

[http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Lol](http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Lol)

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bad_user
I've never used LOL. Most of all because it sounds sarcastic and I can think
of better ways to sound sarcastic than using LOL. Since 20 years ago when I
started communicating over the Internet I've been using the standard smiley,
which is pretty old [1] and sometimes "haaaaahahahahahaha" to denote extreme
laughter :-)

[1] [http://research.microsoft.com/en-
us/um/people/mbj/Smiley/Jok...](http://research.microsoft.com/en-
us/um/people/mbj/Smiley/Joke_Thread.html)

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erikb
I never knew that people would consider ":-)" as laughing. For me it's just a
smile, in the literal sense. And if I say something funny and you just smile
I'd consider it a "that wasn't really funny, idiot" rather than a laugh. But
good to know people think that way about that emoticon.

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bad_user
Well, in online conversations I don't really laugh as I don't find anything to
be that funny. Actually judging by my online conversations on Facebook with
those new emoticons, it seems to me that everybody online has lots of laughs,
crawling over the floor, pissing themselves and I'm wondering what I'm
missing, or what are those people smoking. But don't worry, as if I :-),
that's not a pity laugh or sarcasm.

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erikb
Nearly sounds sad, that you don't have much to laugh in online conversations.
I sometimes nearly fall from the chair because I laugh so hard.

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hias
Maybe "new internet people" or "normal people" don't even know "lol" anymore.
Back in the days we spend our youth in IRC or bbs where these abbreviations
were common. But nowadays people connect with people they already know in real
life on facebook and talk with them like they would in real life. (to a
certain degree ;-) )

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Qantourisc
Maybe partially in interesting/cause is haha is easier to type then lol (at
least on qwerty with 2 hands).

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imancit
You know, this is probably a big part of it. On a touchscreen 'haha' and
'hehe' are way easier.

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ajkjk
I'm confident that this is not why I say 'haha'. 'LOL' or 'lol' sounds
sarcastic or at-best ironic to me. Certain people I know still use it at the
end of sentences, but I (without meaning to) find it childish.

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noobie
Years of watching The Simpsons wired my brain in a way that associates "
_haha_ " with sarcasm[0].

I use " _hhhhh_ " instead, easy to type and makes a more "realistic" sound to
me.

0.[https://youtu.be/rX7wtNOkuHo](https://youtu.be/rX7wtNOkuHo)

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erikb
Depends on people's language I think. For me (German) "hhhh" sounds in my head
like two dogs doing it, which might also be fun, but in a different way. But
in fact there are many countries where they write "hhh" for laughing, so
you're not alone.

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mkagenius
The votes on this website says 20% use Lol. (which implies more older people
read wsj)

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dmlorenzetti
My wife and her Thai friends frequently use "555" (the Thai word for "5" being
"ha"). It's a nice cross-over between the two languages, and of course quite
easy to type.

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oblio
xaxaxa

jajaja

huehuehue

Internet games teach you a lot of things :)

~~~
test1235
kekekeke

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erikb
At first I was surprised, but it's true. I saw a person writing "lol" a few
days ago and it was really strange to read that nowadays. I thought that it is
due to my increasing age, though. Didn't know the whole world stopped lolling.

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noblethrasher
Anecdata:

My local friends and I have always just used “heh”, but even 10–15 years ago,
a bunch of my friends from Spanish-speaking cultures were using “j(a|e)+” or
some approximate.

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philtar
> ITT: People reminiscing about the old days or explaining how they, too, say
> haha.

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coco1989
ha

