Okay so this post is on the monster conversation ender "lol". You must have all noticed by now that if you post or say something at any time on the internet pertaining only that one syllable or 3 letter abreviation, it kills the conversation.

Question i have is where did it come from and why does everyone use it so much? I was told it was something to do with AOL but i refuse to believe this as they are not the oldest ISP around, does anyone know? because wikipedia gives me funny looks when i type it in there. Also why is it used so much? i mean its become a generic word that can be used in any sentence, such as the word "like".

Ty if you can or cant help.

lol = Laughing out loud.

It just means people think something is funny and made them laugh.

Exactly! I was first introduced to lol, rofl, roflmao, and other such online slang while playing Everquest back in 1998. Since then the usage of such slang, including new variations (lollers, lollerskates, roflcopter, roofles, etc) has increased dramatically. Nowadays it seems every other message I receive in game ends with one of these little quips.

Fun Fact number 42: Lol means fun in Dutch!

So...the Dutch are out to corrupt our forums with 1337ish n00bs? This is very troubling...

Back in 96/97 (maybe even further back) when threatening to TOS someone on AOL meant something, people needed a way to signify that was funny. So some jerkoff made up a ton of acronyms for folks too lazy to type complete and coherent sentences. That was my introduction. Some wikipedia hunting may indicate it has been around considerably longer.

I remember lol as far back 92-93. Back then AoL was the most known commercial ISP (my account was through college). LOL was just there. I can believe the thing about the ToS issues for AoL, but I'm pretty dang sure LoL was in common usage before then.

So "LOL" has been the anthem of the unintelligent since the dawn of time then?

Originally it was just a new method for the growing internet culture to identify themselves. Sort of like an in slang but in digital terms.

Yes... they dug to deep into those mines... discovered... shadow and lol...

So, how many of you have started saying LOL in real life? =P

I hate myself for it. =(

I do O.o

Question; do you say El Oh El or just Lol?

I say Lawl and only when I'm saying "no" to a ridiculous request.

I said "Lawl" ONCE, then beat myself until I never said it again. WITH A HAMMER.

Roffle, I question the act of saying any of them out when you could just laugh.

It's just an acronym that caught on as informal shorthand. For some reason "heh" or "haha" or "I just laughed" didn't work for people. OMG!eleven is the same sort of thing. Like 1337, now it's used primarily by kids or to make fun of people. Worrying about it just leads to unnecessary stress.

They stole 1337 from hackers. =/

They stole 1337 from the dead cow cult, didn't they?

That explains the avatar. But it doesn't count if you wear a helmet at the time.

And as I remember it, it was first used as an abbreviation, the incessant use as an acronym wasn't til later. Then again, I wasn't that involved in the net. *shrug*

So, did not want to make this my first post, but it's kind of my dept.



Along with TOS, I think it was just easier for people to type in acronyms. I didn't know it was only kosher to say "lol" if you were actually laughing out loud, so I would (and still do ) give people a huge string of "LOLOLOL" for something that i found humorous.


Um, OMFG, like, totally. For serious, my bff and his roommates and I all started doing it, now we have the whole world doing it. One of my friends compared me to that one Cingular commercial with the little girl. He's now calling me "My BFF, Jill - S-D-N-F!" I think the best way to pronounce the acronyms is to just say the letter as opposed to trying to pronounce "brb." Being a leading authority in internet cool, I would know... LOLRITE?? Nowai.

That's really only a reaction if people use it all the time. Otherwise, there is no net-speak police.

Why the fudge to people write words with numbers? IT'S NOT THAT HARD TO TYPE COHERENT SENTENCES PEOPLE!

Pretty much explains text-talk too

the following might not be politically correct and might actually offend some.. but texting has been addressed.

Boondocks take on text messaging

It's like a "hacker" thing. Back when hacking was really cool and anyone with a punting program on AOL was considered a true hacker (LOLOLOLOL lame.) they spoke in numbers as a "secret h4x0rz" langauge. At least, that's how I recall it, anyway.

I sometimes say lol out loud. Can't say I ever use it as a laugh.. It just means fun, in Dutch, as da Hunter already pointed out. You can have fun, so you can have lol. Now; this sounds a bit odd when you're used to internet-slang.

But anyway; kek is far cooler than lol. (And, funny fact, kek means right, or good, in some Dutch saxonic slangs.)

I have to admit, I'm guitly of using lol, rofl, lmao etc quite abundantly. Mostly when I'm using MSN or googletalk, but there's just no other way to communicate that I am actually laughing my head off. And I tend to laugh a lot. I use "haha" in a sarcastic way, rather than to say I'm laughing. "Haha" means "I did not appreciate that joke, you are so lucky you're out of reaching distance."

The fun part is when you're talking to someone who doesn't know any of the shortcuts and you hit them with "LMAO" and they reply with "lmao? What is that supposed to mean?" <-- this happens to me. Lots. Which tells you something about how often I'm called a geek by friends and family! ;-)

To say the truth, I reckon one lazy person decided to express how he is feeling by putting lol...I am laughing out loud.

it came from the same place brb, g2g, bff, ttyl, and so on came from... a bored teenager with nothing to do intant messages all day until he types so fast he only typed the first letters and forgot spaces

It's two l's with an o in the middle

see the only time i have ever said lol out loud has been with so much sarcasm i make people look sad for about 5 minutes.

Lol is the most sarcasm i can squeeze into 3 letters

See i have been reading up on it and AOL just used a spin story so that they could SEEM to be the ones who invented the abreviations, though they have been around a lot longer than AOL has. They were just looking for a lot of basically free publicity. turns out that some of the "new" things we use nowadays are stupidly old, like the @ symbol which has been around since ancient egyt o.O

Stupid aol, next they will claim to own canada and run the stock markets or something crazy.

and finally... i didnt ask for what it meant... i know that , just why everyone has a fetish for using it so much, even when its not funny, like they will just put lol at the begining or end of all setences... for no apparent reason.

also if you want some of the most stupid new gamer or "1337"speech then look at; rofl copter, roflcakes, lmaoiabanwas (which apparently means laugh my ass off (lmao we all recognise this) in a barn at night with a sheep, i keep getting this while playing CSS and DoW: DC online) the worst i gues would have to "LOLBURGERS!" why? why include food?

Does anyone here actualy just say HA HA HA like Phil Ken Sebben? Much better than speaking Leet.

well i think the problem with HAHAHA is that for something really funny, you are gonna wanna put more of them... and in the end you have this massaive page ful of "HA" repeated a billion times (english billion please seeing as its bigger)

i just dont like the fact that a lot of people now begin every sentence with "lol" i mean when i said hi to my friend the other night, they responded "lol hi"

why? what was funny about hi??

using lol or any form of IM slang in real life is just not right. anyone who does it is either a mass murdering psycho or an alien trying to make the whole world illiterate and unliterate. my advice, get new friends.

my reaction at the time was funnier i must say.

"hi" me
"lol hi" steve
*whacks door into steve repeatedly* "what was that steve" me
"i coughed..." steve

it was funny at the time and still is.

Also i do get the IM "lol blah blah blah" crap all the time too, whats with that? whats funny? am i some sort of retard for not getting this?

Well, If we could get some nice legislation passed through Congress, I could get funding for my own department of Thought Police. We could police the whole series of tubes of the Internet and cause those cursed users of "LOL" to dissapear in the night. We wouldn't have to deal with anymore horrific mispellings or the substitution of numbers for letters. The english language could actually make a comeback.

I say we corrale all of the lolsayers in to a cage, dip them in acid, then break out the blowtorches!

naptha would be better than acid, then ye olde torches work better and with a more theatrical effect.

english is forever deadened since they let Chav into the english dictionary, ITS AN ABREVIATION PEOPLE!!

I...HATE...OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY!!

their website is lame too.

And my friend actually said FTW in public today, i walked away before people started pointing and staring.

Acronyms should never be used in verbal communication, especially out in public. It's just wierd.

weird and it also makes all conversation from that point stop...
...what can you say to "lol" other than an insult or a swear...
..."lol" how i hate you

It's like saying "Screw you, I wanna go watch POKeMON!"

yes, yes it is exactly like that...

...*coughs*

Jabba, you answered that as if you do watch pokemon... do you?

now first i would like to state that the intention there was to sound more like i had NO idea what he meant, still dont infact. Second i only have standard british terrestial tv.

THATS 4 FREAKING CHANNELS OF BOREDOM

pokémon would be a luxury for me

You get Top Gear don't you? If you don't like it I hope you get hit by a rocket car... oh that is in bad taste.

Out of my experience with the word, and other ancronyms, my personal thought is that it destroys the english language.

"LOL" "ROFLMAO" etc. It gets way into the youth's minds these day. Trust me, I know.
I was operator in the chat on a English youth community site. Tell you this, I had to read their "sentences" about 5 times over before I really could understand the ancronyms they use.

These things are destroying the language, we need to stop it somehow, its important, and its nothing I would like to see "official".

-Daoko

top gear is alright, but im not that into it, reason? because it is a show where people worship cars... this to me seems a little sad

Lol is overrated anyways and not alot of ppl "laugh out loud" so i say we insitute: LiS
Laughing In side! YES! ... ;P oh wait that defys Daoko's purpose... Hmm Sorry? LIS

Not just any cars, good cars, well usually. And there is nothing wrong with being a "Petrol-head".