When You Type 'LOL' in Your E-mails,
it Only Gives Me More Reason to Kill You

By Kevin Gibson
April 29, 2009

I’m here to talk about my disdain for the acronym “LOL,” which as you all know is Internet slang for “laugh out loud.” I hate this. It makes me feel like my head is ablaze and being stabbed repeatedly by angry spider monkeys. It makes me want to break things.

This TLA (“three-letter acronym”) is a creation of Usenet, an Internet communications web that goes back nearly three decades; LOL has spawned such offshoots as “LMAO” (“laugh my ass off”) and even BWL (“bursting with laughter”), but it is “LOL” which I see most often.

And it makes me want to rake my face off with the back side of a claw hammer.

Why do I hate it so? It isn’t really the laziness or  triteness involved so much as the oft-misused context. I get any number of e-mails each day in which someone will type something like, “I barely made it to work on time this morning, LOL.”

Look, the simple occurrence of being late to work is not funny. Or at least it’s not laugh-out-loud funny.

No, I stand by my first assertion: this statement is simply not humorous in any way. It is meaningless chitchat, nothing more than space filler and, essentially, a waste of time as well as a waste of the energy it took to move your fingers across your keyboard. Are you really laughing out loud about what you’ve just told me? If so, you are an idiot. I know I’m not laughing out loud. Did I miss something? Did your being late to work involve some manner of zany hijinks you’ve neglected to share?

I see people post this in their Facebook statuses from time to time as well, and this makes me want to bludgeon a fairy with a garden hoe. I will see the pointless status, like “Dave is so tired he can barely stay awake at his desk LOL!”, and then I fantasize about being drenched in bright pink fairy blood with a maniacal grin on my face.

But then I turn my attention back to the problem at hand. OK, “Dave,” listen here: You are a moron. First of all, if you can’t give us something useful or entertaining, why even bother? How many times a day do I log onto that site to waste my time playing Mafia Wars and come across statuses like “Juanita is painting her toenails.” Painting your toenails? Really, Juanita? How you fascinate us with your revelations.

But to post some mundane sentence about some mundane activity and to also punctuate it with LOL, mixed with bad punctuation to boot? You should probably know you have just enhanced my inner hatred for all of mankind. It transforms me from a mild-mannered writer/marketing geek into a seething gargoyle bent on the destruction of the human race, and of Internet acronyms of all manner.

OK, not really, but it does annoy me. Or could you tell?

To avoid actual violence against purveyors of LOL, I believe laws should be passed by the government which dictate that the ONLY time a person is allowed to type “LOL” in an electronic communication is if they have actually, physically laughed out loud about that which they have read or written. And even with this, there should be a limit of only one usage of the dreaded acronym per week. No, per month. Punishable by stoning. (Sorry, there I go again.)

In fact, I may run for office on this very platform. I think I could rally enough pseudo-sanctimonious assholes like myself to exact some tangible change in our society, something that will not only decrease violence but also make our nation a better place. After all, that’s what our government is designed to do, and our elected officials’ first priority is to work tirelessly for the good of the people. So I …

Christ, now I’ve got myself laughing out loud. Ah, never mind.

E-mail me. IMO, LOL sux.