Back in my youth, I had a friend on AIM who excessively typed “lol”. We ended up talking on the phone once and I was surprised to learn that (a) she actually did laugh out loud approximately that frequently and (b) it was more of a nervous giggle, and not so much a full-throated laugh.
This morphing of LOL is used as an example in the very interesting and enjoyable book "Words on the Move: Why English Won't – and Can't – Sit Still (Like, Literally)" by John McWhorter.
If you put it like that, the marker would only make sense in an otherwise serious conversation. But when it's used as a stop marker for every other message in a texting app, that's already a very casual and light-hearted environment, why do some people feel the need to reinforce it again and again? Maybe I'm overthinking it lol
It's also interesting, i frequently use `lol.` as a sort of combination emotion, where i'm signalling laughing but also abruptly stopping. Meaningfully different than a `heh`. Likewise `heh` and `heh.` have a very distinct feel.
Language is weird, it just comes naturally and organically and i go with the flow. Though i find this style of writing mostly done in texting. Long/medium form doesn't benefit as greatly from it.
I've indeed seen it used to mean basically 'this is serious but don't take it too seriously' if that makes sense, in the way that someone might say: 'university education is useless for the current job market lol'. I guess there are levels to this thing.
I don't believe it's happened yet; Merriam-Webster still has it as an abbreviation only spelled as LOL whereas in practice it's already used as a verb.
I absolutely love this. I'm glad that local machine learning is within reach for everyday hobbyists and not entirely limited to big organizations with deep pockets or experts. This may be a dumb joke, but the tech is there to make loads of useful things.
It reminds me of a more tech-oriented version of the hilarious 'Unnecessary Inventions' guy who makes great unnecessary (not: not useless) inventions - you may enjoy his channel if you like this:
Related: when doing proofreading, whenever I got a press release that quoted Person X as saying Y, I tried to track down Person X in the hallway and ask him/her to utter the quote Y, so that writing the press release would not make me a liar.
For me, when I see 'lol' used like this I read it as quite aggressive and offensive. I don't see it really an expression of surprise or shock, but with its original meaning used in a sarcastic way: 'I am laughing with incredulity at the fact that you actually think that'.
I once proposed to some people I know getting started in app development an idea: the app would listen to what you say and if you said the word "güey" more than five times in a 24 hour window it would give you an electric shock.
My beard just got some grey in it when I laughed in my head and didn’t reply “rol”, the entirely opt in lol-verifier that we all used to treat as sacred.
