I hate LOL.
LOL is the most overused TLA (Three Letter Acronym) in the history of the web. Every chat-room, message board and comments page is full of thirteen-year-olds, and people who spell like thirteen-year-olds, posting “OMG!!1! WTF??? LOL LOL LOL. PWND!!! most pwnd in teh wrold of FAIL!!!!!!” or worse: LOLOLOLOLOL. Laughing-out-loud-out-loud-out-loud-out-loud-out-loud?
LOL is a lie. If something actually made you laugh, I know you typed ROFL or LMAO These acronyms still have value, signifying something genuinely, and more than ordinarily, funny.
LOL, to me, says “Mildly amusing, made me smile slightly, but actually fairly generic, and I’ll forget it as soon as I hit the stumble button.” Honestly, when was the last time you laughed – actually laughed, not LOL’d – at something on-line?
I hope you’re not LOL-ing the LOL-cats. *Shudder* The original may – may – have been funny, and creative. They have spread to become the cockroaches of the web, with their uninspired photographs, un-funny messages and gratingly poor spelling. Their proliferation (and only that) renders them more obnoxious than “I can haz bucket?”.
Frequent misuse of LOL is often found to be associated with the use of pwnd, fail, OMG, excessive smileys, multiple exclamation and interrogation marks, and obnoxiously bad spelling.
In comparison, LOI is understated, and underused. Rather than being an inconsistently capitalised LOL, LOI is the acronym for ‘Laughing On the Inside’. It’s more honest than LOL. It says, “I found that funny, but it didn’t crack me up laughing.” or “That really made me smile.” It is appropriately used where you wish to express your amusement and appreciation, and still be genuine.
Type what you mean.
Posted by lostinthecrowd 