LOL

I find the use of the term LOL to be quite overused. Typically I use this term abundantly in my text messages and in email, though I am trying not to use it as much these days. I generally don't use it in my blogs.

When you think about it, how often do you 'laugh out loud' in your normal conversations? Probably not as often as you use LOL in your texts or emails. I guarantee that most of the time, when you use the term LOL you use it because what you just read was slightly funny or silly, but was not enough to really make you laugh (out loud). Or possibly you are trying to convey that something you are saying is funny or silly and not meant to be mean or serious. It's almost as if we're apologizing before we speak so as not to offend our audience. Ironically, most of the people that we text or email with, and specifically that we would use the term LOL with are our friends and family, so we shouldn't have to apologize up front for what we say. The should typically know whether you are making a sarcastic remark or whether what you are saying is a serious statement or not. If they do not they most certainly should not take anything you say so seriously that they would be offended by it.

The term LOL was specifically developed for text and email and led to an entire genre of "new" words. The genre has many websites dedicated to it such as lolcats, etc. It's led to a generation of web users and texters who have become lazy in their english and grammar. But this is not my main point, I want to focus solely on LOL usage.

I cringe at what a conversation would sound like if people talked using LOL in their verbal language. Can you imagine? (Keep in mind that the proper pronounciation of LOL is lawl on most websites)

John: "Hey Pete, how are ya?"
Pete: "Lawl, I'm a little hungover from going out last night."
John: "Lawl, yeah last night was a blast, though I'm never singing karaoke again, lawl."
Pete: "Have you hear from Joan today, lawl, last I heard from her, she was in the bathroom praying to the porcelain god. I was LAUGHING MY A$$ OFF at that!"

You get the idea, though this would probably be much more funny to actually listen to a conversation like this.

In the above conversation, three of the four "lawls" would be a chuckle in real life and would not have been voiced. I get the fact that it's hard to express laughter any other way via text or email, but we created terms for when something is really funny, ROTFL, or LMAO. Why haven't we created a term for when something is just slightly funny, something that we would really just chuckle at but not really laugh at?

Maybe we could just go with ll (laughs a little), or ckl (chuckle) when something is just a little funny and not worthy of an LOL. I don't have the solution, as usual, I just have a complaint about something that I think is stupid, yet still use more than I'd like to. I do appreciate those people who use "ha ha ha" and "hee hee" in their text and email still, while it's still not necessary at least it's not LOL.