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Morning Page: LOL
Jan. 6th, 2010 11:55 pmToday's not-actually-written-in-the-morning Morning Page is about LOL. Or lol. Which is, I must confess, something I loathe. Not laughter, mind you. Laughing — out loud, silently, so hard you need your inhaler or snort chocolate milk out your nose or wet your pants, so hard you knock yourself out of your chair and roll on the floor — that's awesome. I'm in complete favor of laughing, and think people should do so as much as possible.
No, I'm talking about the use of "lol" as some kind of bizarre punctuation. It's a sort of bastard emoticon, and it seems to be used almost exclusively with statements that are not in the least lulz-worthy. You see it in things like "My boyfriend just stole $500 from me and dumped me. And he told me I need to get an AIDS test lol."
WTF?
No seriously. Are we supposed to infer from that that the speaker (well, texter, because lol is pretty much a text, chat and email phenomenon, Gods help us if it becomes spoken) doesn't actually care, so we shouldn't worry too much either? "Oh, haha, an AIDS test! And he stole five hundred bucks before he dumped you? That's hilarious! Hey, want to catch the nine-o-clock showing of Avatar?"
Lol has a starring role in acts of passive-aggression, too, like, "OK, I'll stay here and clean up after the party while you go out and have fun. It's only my birthday lol."
Oh, right how deliciously ironic that you are slaving away on your birthday for people who obviously don't care about you as much as you care about them. Or was that more of a, 'Tee hee, I just love martyrdom' thing?
And there's the ever popular, "You ARE going to be on time for the movie, right? lol"
Hee, see what you did there? You shamed the other person for being habitually late but the lol made it totally a joke. You didn't mean anything pointed or critical by it.
Sometimes lol shows up in places where it makes no sense whatsoever. "What time are you coming over tonight? lol"
Eh? Um... Are you amused by the idea of my showing up?
Or there's, "Let's get pizza before the game lol."
Um... Okay. Sure. Maybe we should get pineapple as a topping, pineapple is kind of funny.
In some of those places you could use a smiley instead, which is why I think lol is sort of functioning as punctuation, the way an emoticon does. But I don't like it. It's not pictorial, and it fails to represent emotion as accurately as :-) or :-( or ^_^ or T_T. And in the passive-aggressive uses, an emoticon would be just as unforgivable.
So... Down with lol. Unless you really are laughing out loud, in which case it's an acronym, like brb, and ttyl. It's shorthand within a chat indicating you found something the other person said was humorous. That's okay. I'll allow that. LOL.
No, I'm talking about the use of "lol" as some kind of bizarre punctuation. It's a sort of bastard emoticon, and it seems to be used almost exclusively with statements that are not in the least lulz-worthy. You see it in things like "My boyfriend just stole $500 from me and dumped me. And he told me I need to get an AIDS test lol."
WTF?
No seriously. Are we supposed to infer from that that the speaker (well, texter, because lol is pretty much a text, chat and email phenomenon, Gods help us if it becomes spoken) doesn't actually care, so we shouldn't worry too much either? "Oh, haha, an AIDS test! And he stole five hundred bucks before he dumped you? That's hilarious! Hey, want to catch the nine-o-clock showing of Avatar?"
Lol has a starring role in acts of passive-aggression, too, like, "OK, I'll stay here and clean up after the party while you go out and have fun. It's only my birthday lol."
Oh, right how deliciously ironic that you are slaving away on your birthday for people who obviously don't care about you as much as you care about them. Or was that more of a, 'Tee hee, I just love martyrdom' thing?
And there's the ever popular, "You ARE going to be on time for the movie, right? lol"
Hee, see what you did there? You shamed the other person for being habitually late but the lol made it totally a joke. You didn't mean anything pointed or critical by it.
Sometimes lol shows up in places where it makes no sense whatsoever. "What time are you coming over tonight? lol"
Eh? Um... Are you amused by the idea of my showing up?
Or there's, "Let's get pizza before the game lol."
Um... Okay. Sure. Maybe we should get pineapple as a topping, pineapple is kind of funny.
In some of those places you could use a smiley instead, which is why I think lol is sort of functioning as punctuation, the way an emoticon does. But I don't like it. It's not pictorial, and it fails to represent emotion as accurately as :-) or :-( or ^_^ or T_T. And in the passive-aggressive uses, an emoticon would be just as unforgivable.
So... Down with lol. Unless you really are laughing out loud, in which case it's an acronym, like brb, and ttyl. It's shorthand within a chat indicating you found something the other person said was humorous. That's okay. I'll allow that. LOL.
