From boredom to laughter. The internet acronym "LOL" - laughing out loud - or laugh out loud - came about as an internet slang. It has been given the origin of the mid-1980s.
Wikipedia says it is attributed to Wayne Pearson who was reportedly the first person to use LOL while responding to a friend's joke in a digital chatroom. Typically origination requires something verifiable in writing, etc, so the first actually recorded use was in 1989. But Wayne gets credit in the articles - some with a picture of him smirking, a few others with a picture of him smiling.
Wikipedia says: 'It is one of many initialisms for expressing bodily reactions, in particular laughter, as text, including initialisms for more emphatic expressions of laughter such as LMAO ("laughing my ass off") and ROFL or ROTFL ("rolling on the floor laughing").'
May sense is that this became a meta humour moment. LOL is "about" laughing - it isn't laughing. What might you have really written if you had laughed. Maybe: this is really funny or this made me laugh. Writing LOL comes across as superior - as wikipedia says "a self-reflexive representation of an action." Maybe sarcastic, maybe cynical.
LOL is said to be in decline now. Fox 59 says if you are still using it you are getting old. Another says people have defaulted to using 'haha' or 'hehe' and emojis. Another says it is a telltale sign that the person typing may be a millennial. That turns up in articles such as:
'LOL' is the new fake laugh
Do people actually laugh a lot after typing LOL?
Why so many people type "lol" with a straight face
Who could guess the story of laughter would take such a turn on the internet.
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