I have a pet hate, actually I have dozens and I’m discovering new ones all the time, but there’s one in particular that rises above all the others. I don’t just hate it, I despise it, I deplore it, I detest it, and any other negative words beginning with ‘de’, and even that is putting it mildly. As I’m sure anyone who knows me (or read my last post) would’ve guessed by now, this deep loathing is aimed towards the abbreviation ‘lol’ and, to a slightly lesser extent, others of its ilk. Its no coincidence that ‘lol’ bares an uncanny resemblance to ‘101’.
I’ve never liked the current use of ‘lol’, mainly because it doesn’t actually mean anything. Of course I know it stands for ‘laugh out loud’ but how many people who use ‘lol’ are actually laughing out loud when they write it?
Absolutely none! That’s how fucking many, because people with a well developed sense of humour don’t need to convince others of this fact, and anyone with a keen wit can generally come up with a far better response. I also know that they aren’t actually ‘laughing out loud’ because otherwise the world would be full of hysterical people guffawing away to themselves every time something not particularly funny happens. If you’re in a public place with a group of strangers, maybe a bus or train, you’ll be lucky to even see anyone smile let alone laugh out loud, but you can bet they’ll be sitting there tapping away on their phones, claiming to be laughing out loud to their friend who has ‘just had toast for breakfast lol’.
I’ve heard the argument that it’s just a polite acknowledgement that someone has written something funny but this argument fails on two fronts: First, the thing that people are ‘lol’ing at is rarely funny, as in the ‘having toast for breakfast’ example. And second, the majority of people who ‘lol’ are doing it in their own sentence. I’ve actually seen ‘lol’ used four times in one very short sentence of ten or so words on facebook, followed by a long stream of comments that all, without fail, contain at least one, but generally more, ‘lol’ in them, and neither the original four ‘lol’ post nor any of the associated comments were in the slightest bit amusing.
Some people use ‘lol’ as a written equivalent of a nervous giggle, not quite sure of how what they’ve written will be taken they’ll add an ‘lol’ or two thinking this will make it better, it doesn’t, it just makes you look nervous, insecure, and humourless. I see ‘lol’ very much as a sign of the terminally humourless. I like a bit of banter, an exchange of wits, it helps keep the mind sharp, but if somebody writes a funny comment somewhere and the wittiest reply you can come up with is ‘lol’ then it’s probably best to keep it to yourself, you’re not adding anything to the joke or conversation, it just kills it dead, or invites other people to take the piss out of your lack of imagination, to which you can only reply ‘lol’ again and prove their point. If you do manage to come up with a remark you think may be witty, but you feel the need to add ‘lol’ to the end just to show that you’re trying to be funny, then that in itself should tell you that the remark isn’t actually as witty as you first thought. You may as well go the whole hog and hire a drummer to follow you around everywhere doing the old ‘BADUM TISH’ every time you say something.
The very worst offenders though are those that use it almost like punctuation, as with the four ‘lol’ facebook post I mentioned earlier, they’ve become so insecure and confused that just forming a sentence seems to become impossible for them, the next step is that they start using ‘lol’ in face to face verbal conversation, and when it gets to that point the only way forward for them is complete and utter social isolation... or repeatedly punching them in the face.
To add a bit of variation into the mix you also have rofl and lmfao, and, an amalgamation of the two, roflmao, I guess the ultimate version would be pmsroflaool. But these just seem to confuse the poor little ‘lol’sters, as finely demonstrated in the following authentic facebook post, copied and pasted, as is, directly from facebook (names and profile pictures have been removed to protect the... well quite frankly, deranged).
Person 1: Happy birthday Grandma hope have good birthday xx
Person 2: Cheeky git!!! Lol thank you
Person 1: Hahahaha u welcome. The message does come with wrinkle cream lmfao lol
Person 2: Is it the same one that you use?? Lol
Person 1: Lol no. I found the fountain of youth hahahahaa rofl
Person 2: That was a dream mate lol
Person 1: Lol don't dream hahahaha. U just jealous cos u old. I got a walking stick for u lol haahahahahaha
Now fair enough ‘person 2’ here is just your standard ‘lol’ster, complete with the overuse of exclamation and question marks (another pet hate, and another facebook staple), but ‘person 1’ seems to be very confused over which abbreviated expression of hilarity to use, so just throws them all in until by the end of the exchange he appears to be channelling Dr Evil on nitrous oxide. Maybe that’s the collective noun for them, a Dr Evil of ‘lol’sters. Could you imagine what kind of state these people would be in if they were in a conversation that was actually funny? They would literally laugh themselves to death, and on their gravestone would be inscribed:
“Here lies Person 2. LTTD RIP lol”
So if you’ve got to the end of this post and find yourself with the overwhelming urge to leave an ironic ‘lol’, ‘rofl’, ‘lmfao’ etc, then congratulations; you’ve kind of proved my point, and you have just become the newest fully paid up member of the League of the Bleeding Obvious.
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