..lol... ARGH!

lol … rofl … lmao … roflmao … Anyone unfamiliar to these terms might want to check out this Guide to Internet Lingo and Emoticons.

These are things that make my eyelid twitch. It’s perfectly understandable that someone should wish to portray their amusement at something. Not everyone wants to sit and hammer “heheheh” on the keyboard to represent laughter. Besides, not everyone laughs like that. There’s the BWAHAHAHAaaA! and heehee… and teeheee.. and gyahaha! Well, you get the idea. Then there are other options like the roleplayer’s asterixes, but they too lack something. *Laughs* can come across as constructed and fake, as though you’re in control of every single little thing you do. And lol is just fast and easy to type. But seriously. Lol. In my view, it lacks any personality or spirit. Ever said it out loud? How about on purpose?

I don’t think I would mind it so much if it weren’t so blatantly overused. Some of you might know what I mean. There are those people out there who seem to add ‘lol’s to the end of every other sentence, as though it were some punctuation tool. Ok, maybe they really are giggling out loud at everything they say, but much of it is just not funny. Let me see if I can conjure you up an example.

“got so much hwk 2 do buh i cnt b bothered 2 do it.. lol.. n im supposed 2 b “gewd” n “trying” dis yr.. lolz.. i guess i will…. nex yr… in 2nd term.. lolz.. “

A cheerful, bubbly person. With an itchy triggerfinger for Lols. (lolz.)

Then there’s the alternative which I confess I overuse. The smileys!
:)
:(
>:)
}:->
But as someone tells me, I’m a visual person. I like the types who go against the stream and rebel by writing (: instead. Takes a while to get used to once your mind has been infused with the ‘eyes first, mouth second’ principle. I dislike msn, icq, aim, and yahoo! smileys. They steal my intended smiley and turn it into something ominous with Malaria, possibly on one or more brain-numbing drugs. I don’t smile like that! I’d rather leave it up to the imagination.

But the thing which annoys me the most is when people use ‘lol’ as if it were a ‘heh’ or so. Some of my very best friends do this. I hope I’ve pointed it out to them at some point or another before they read this, and I do apologize if I haven’t. (I like you anyway.) It is this:

lololololololololol!!!!

Whoa! calm down a moment! You may be laughing your head off, but do you realize what you just said in your spasms of joy? “laughs out loud out loud out loud out loud…etc” or maybe “Laughs out laughs out laughs out” or possibly even “laughs out loud out laughs out loud out laughs…”

Ah well. Each to their own. Life would be dull if I had nothing to complain about.