Personal Exposure
It had been close to a decade since I stepped into the world of the Internet. And of course, back then when mIRC was still the hottest thing in town, my very first exposure to webchat is on mIRC. Back then I was a noob (newbie), so there were a lot of shorthands that I very unfamiliar with. I will always try to guess what the shorthand meant first, and only when I am very sure that I am definitely not going to get it, then I will ask what the shorthand means. "lol" was one of them that I could not get what it stands for. Why? That is clearly because I would never expect anyone in the right mind to be laughing out loud in front of a computer. But I didn't really bother about it and even began to use the shorthand.
The Abuse
So when did the idea that we should stop abusing "lol" came to me. It was when I stumbled upon (yes using StumbleUpon) this site called nomorelol.com. It talked about how in the past decade, people are misrepresenting themselves by "lol"ing over stuffs that are supposed to be funny. Furthermore, "lol" had even become punctuation to some users. They use "lol" every now and then. nomorelol.com calls these people "lol" addicts. For example, someone might say, "Today's weather sucks! lol...". Yes, I had seen such lines before. Perhaps they are unaware that they are putting "lol", and it had become a habit to include "lol" before pressing the "Enter" key. Over the years, different and more exaggerated forms of "lol" evolved, such as, "rolf" and "lmao"; these are expressions that are even misrepresentative. Well, I admit that I was one of the abusers, but from now on, I will make it a point to stop "lol"ing unless I am really laughing out loud.
The Solution
Ok, so if we are not going to use "lol", then what can we use? nomorelol.com is suggesting that we should use "loi", laughing on the inside. I think it is pretty appropriate. I am thinking we can still use the traditional "haha" to represent that we are laughing to an extent. Are you one of those abusers? Do you "lol" every now and then? And is the content so funny that you are really laughing out loud? Lol.. Oops. Haha...
