LOL is now officially 25 years old, along with other shorthands. The Guardian has a list with best and worst LOL uses.
LOL is 25 years old. Since its first recorded use in May 1989, LOL has completely transformed how we live. We text it to each other. We write it on pictures of animals. We say it out loud if we want people to think that we're creepy sociopaths.
A world without LOL is a world without laughter, or at least a world without people claiming to laugh when they're really just sitting there silently typing things onto Facebook with a Jaffa Cake hanging out of their mouth.
Some claim LOL originated earlier in the 80's.
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(Score: 0, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 29 2014, @10:38PM
LOLcano
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 29 2014, @10:47PM
Last ROFLCOPTER!
ROFL:ROFL:ROFL:ROFL
____^____
L __/ [x]\
LOL====__ \
L \__________]
I I
----------/
(Score: 1) by pert.boioioing on Thursday May 29 2014, @11:31PM
This is finally relevant. [imgur.com]
(Score: 2) by nightsky30 on Friday May 30 2014, @11:51AM
lawl.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Thursday May 29 2014, @10:42PM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Thursday May 29 2014, @10:54PM
Meh.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 30 2014, @11:48AM
Bleh.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday May 29 2014, @10:44PM
Ah, no. Not so much.
The web was transformative. Email was transformative, and smartphones were tranformative.
But LOL? Nah!
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Thursday May 29 2014, @10:54PM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday May 30 2014, @06:40PM
Writers always used emotive content in sentences. At least good writers always did. The difference is that they now do this using acronyms to save space.
Doesn't happen (more than once) in an English composition class.
The internet is no different than any other communication medium. Medium specific standards and memes evolve.
The same was true of the telegraph era stop.
There were specific message formats stop.
There were standard abbreviations stop.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Friday May 30 2014, @09:53PM
This is amazingly untrue, even on a very limited (ie text-only) site like Soylent News. We're not talking about getting around limitations of the medium (the telegraph argument would have been better suited to a discussion about Twitter...) we're talking about how people now structure their sentences in a way that are now starting to become okay-in-the-workplace. You should read some war-correspondences from soldiers in the field some time. Written communication was a whole different artform then.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 3, Funny) by theluggage on Thursday May 29 2014, @10:48PM
Lol @ 25? Wtf? Rtfa - tldnr. bs imho.
(Score: 1) by gznork26 on Thursday May 29 2014, @10:54PM
I'm pretty sure LOL was around long before that. Back around 1980, for example, the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society (LASFS) self-published a zine called APA-L from pages run off by fans on mimeos, and they were rife with acronyms such as RAEBNC, ROFLMAO and so forth.
Khipu were Turing complete.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 29 2014, @11:51PM
So then put up or shut up. Vague claims that they appeared in something you've provided no documentation of is as lame as the link to the guy claiming to have invented it on Viewline.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday May 31 2014, @03:36AM
APA-L is a PRINT medium, son... it takes time to search.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday May 31 2014, @03:47AM
And APAs themselves go back to the 1870s (as I was mildy surprised to learn):i ation#History [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amateur_press_assoc
But abbreviations and acronyms have been with us since the first scribe had to scribble something in a hurry.
[LASFSian here, albeit involuntarily gafiated.]
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Snotnose on Thursday May 29 2014, @10:54PM
I was a heavy Usenetter in the 80's, I can assure you it was common back in those days.
My ducks are not in a row. I don't know where some of them are, and I'm pretty sure one of them is a turkey.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 30 2014, @12:35AM
If this were true then someone would have found it since there are Usenet archives from 1980 to present. Methinks your assurance means jack without evidence.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Friday May 30 2014, @06:01AM
Where are the Usenet archives from the 80s? The earliest archive I know is DejaNews (later bought by Google and turned into Google Groups), which started in the 90s.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1) by ticho on Friday May 30 2014, @06:36AM
Let's all tune in to olduse.net then, and patiently wait for the first lol to appear. :-)
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Friday May 30 2014, @07:29AM
There! Carved in mystic Runes, into the very living stone itself, are the last words of Usenet from the '80's. (Alright, does not have the same ring to it, but it does say "Arggggggggggghh!" No, back of the throat, "Arrrggghhhhh!" That's it! Behind you, it's the Black Beast of Arrrggghhh!) LOL!
(Score: 2) by EvilJim on Friday May 30 2014, @12:49AM
I was on Fidonet in the very early '90s - cant say I ever saw it there. we were a bit late on the internet train in my country so didn't see usenet until late in the 90's when internet started to go mainstream... actually, it would have been 94 when I was given an afterschool detention for something stupid and the headmaster knew I was a geek and sat me down and said 'here, try this new education thing we've got'... 'weeeeeoooooockckcshhhhhhhhh'... 'connect 9600bps'... hey... this is interesting... (begins downloading doom updates)
(Score: 2) by sgleysti on Friday May 30 2014, @03:39AM
...and that it really means Laughing OnLine ;)
(Score: 1) by Buck Feta on Friday May 30 2014, @04:41AM
dot dash dot dot
dash dash dash
dot dash dot dot
- fractious political commentary goes here -
(Score: 2) by Maow on Friday May 30 2014, @03:17AM
It's now come to mean "I laugh at you mockingly and without humour present."
Seriously, notice the next few times you see the accursed acronym under discussion being used, and how few of those actually indicate presence of humour.
Also hated are the fucking emoticons. An occasional one here or there - no big deal.
But forums are terrible for 2-3 smilies or winkies per post, at tech sites like (ahem) phpBB support or at such sites as Bad Astronomy, and now, Soylent News. WTF is up with that?
Worst of all is when the forum software replaces the fucking smilies, etc., with images of faces. Worst of the worst is when they're animated. Fuck right off.
So, offending "lentils", what's up with your nauseating use of emoticons in Soylent News comments? It seems a rare story that doesn't have them these days.
I block image loading on the offending sites that convert to images - or simply leave, not to return.
And as I can't read 3 stories in a row here without someone creepily winking or grinning at me, my visits to this site may be ending too.
What compels you to make faces in your comments on a regular basis? Obviously they don't add any content. Are you not able to write well enough to have your intentions understood without a juvenile indication? Is it some kind of ice breaking thing? Illiteracy? Why do people do it on otherwise serious and relatively intelligent discussions?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Angry Jesus on Friday May 30 2014, @03:25AM
Lol!
(Score: 2) by Maow on Friday May 30 2014, @08:09AM
Christ, I wasn't gonna bother coming back to this thread since it was so transparently obvious someone would do that.
But I saw that you'd posted something and therefore it'd likely be worth reading.
Disappointed...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Angry Jesus on Friday May 30 2014, @01:40PM
Don't think that just because it was obvious that it wasn't warranted. You think it was obvious because "lol" is the topic of TFA. I say your post was so obviously over top that no other response was appropriate.
(Score: 1) by paulej72 on Friday May 30 2014, @03:33AM
Well I never used emoticons before I started using IRC when this site began. I found that they are truly needed as it is hard to convey a joke or sarcasm properly. You do not want to offend the other person when you are just joking, but your words actually convey a different meaning. Not a problem when talking face-to-face or even via phone, but when doing quick exchanges via IRC stuff would get ugly fast without those emoticons.
Team Leader for SN Development
(Score: 2) by hubie on Friday May 30 2014, @03:58AM
What you say is true about the value of emoticons, but I wholeheartedly agree with his position on turning them into images and animating them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 30 2014, @05:08AM
I wholeheartedly agree with his position on turning them into images and animating them.
I think that anyone with that strong of a reaction has got misplaced anger issues. It's just a little yellow dancing polka-dot that stops jumping around as soon as you hit escape. It isn't like somebody changed the user interface or remapped the short-cut keys in his browser. Even on the scale of 1st world problems it is trivial, trivial shit.
(Score: 2) by monster on Friday May 30 2014, @01:21PM
I agree, it's not even like if someone deleted the Start menu and put in place a half-assed, full-screen, animated grid of ads!
(Score: 2) by Maow on Friday May 30 2014, @08:05AM
I was new to IRC just 12 or 13 months ago - helped refugees from Cracked.com's comment section set up a forum and an IRC server.
There were some pretty freaking hilarious things posted - none were made more funny by emoticons.
Some were writers from Cracked, and I don't seem to recall ever, ever reading a humorous piece, anywhere, where the author felt an obligation to make faces at the readers to get across intent.
Of course, IRC vs actual writing are quite different, but as I used to say, "The Internet - like TV - it does not need a laugh track."
That fucking place became full of shit-eating grins (XD) and obsequious symbols of love (<3) amongst people who've never even met each other that it drove me nuts. Bunch of Smiley-face McDerptards.
Look for SSiIRC [thecommentsection.org] for some of it. (Shit Said in IRC.)
Guess I wasted my time lurnin' to english though...
Damn it kids, get off my lawn.
(Score: 1) by outlier on Friday May 30 2014, @01:50PM
This has always been my impression as well. People use emoticons as a substitute for body language which is ostensibly lacking from online forums. Of course I don't use them myself since I dislike them almost as much as the gp.
To those people trying to kick the habit though, try using html style tags in place of emoticons next time. That way you sound like a clever technophile instead of a thirteen year old girl.
(Score: 1) by jbWolf on Friday May 30 2014, @05:20AM
I read a good bit of comments here and I hardly see them. Maybe I read stories and their comments earlier than you (which means you see more than I do). In any case, I will use the occasional smiley or sad face or wink (two character version) to ensure the other person understands me. I intend to use it even here on Soylent News. I'm not the biggest fan of them, but I use them to avoid flame wars when necessary.
Smilies and LOLs and things like that are a living part of our written, (usually) online, casual language. It exist because of a need. If it were somehow banned tomorrow, something else will very quickly rise up to take it's place. (Store magazines can't use the word "vagina" on the cover, but vajayjay [google.com] is not a problem.) The other things you mention (like LOL being used in the absence of humor) is part of the evolution of language. Some words get watered down and others mutate so that they are stronger to use.
I'm learning another language right now and in the process, I've learned a lot about my native English language. It's amazing how fast the English language changes. It's amazing even how different English is between writing and speaking. (Writing tends to lean towards more complex sentences. Speaking uses simpler sentences.) Even writing science fact is very different from writing science fiction. Here's an example.
Science:
Sci-Fi:
And since you hate those "fucking smilies", I'd like to talk about the word "fuck" too. There is a name John le Fucker [wikipedia.org] recorded in writing from 1278 (along with some controversy) and a brief history of the word fuck can be found here [wikipedia.org]. The rise of the vulgar use of the word seems to come into being between 1500 and 1800. (This is hard to verify, of course since none of use were around.)
Language is da bomb, so like take a chill pill, accept our swell language in the casual-written form, and be groovy!
www.jb-wolf.com [jb-wolf.com]
(Score: 1) by PReDiToR on Friday May 30 2014, @06:07AM
Can I subscribe to your newsletter?
Are you standing for election in a country I can move to?
I'm kidding, I wouldn't move to another country just to get away from animated smilies but, I may consider moving to one with lax gun laws so I could stop certain people (mostly women or effeminate men) putting a "X" at the end of their SMS's.
I'm in a family full of them. It makes me
Do not meddle in the affairs of geeks for they are subtle and quick to anger.
(Score: 2) by Marand on Friday May 30 2014, @06:35AM
User complains about emoticons and acronyms, uses "WTF" in same post. Irony ensues.
For what it's worth (what's with people shortening that, anyway? Damn kids and their acronyms!), emoticons are useful for indicating the intent of a comment. Basically, it's a text-based replacement for nuances of conversation, such as tone, that don't translate directly from speech to writing.
Specifically, it can help the humour-challenged (possibly you, judging by that rant) understand that a comment is being made facetiously, so that people won't take what should be an obvious joke, take it at face value, and then complain about how idiotic the poster is being. Or even that a comment is being made teasingly, which is why the ":P" face is often used.
In summary: they don't add content, but they do add context, which can still be misunderstood despite good intentions and clever writing, due in part to everything you say being subjected to trolls, thin-skinned folk that get offended easily, and people with disorders that affect their social skills and thus can't seem to comprehend intention without some sort of sign that explains it for them.
(Score: 2) by Marand on Friday May 30 2014, @06:38AM
I probably should have also noted that this site is capable of doing bold and italics so there's *no* *reason* _to_ _do_ _this_ *shit*.
Except I understood the intent and don't have autism, so I can just let it slide ;)
(See, the winky face means it was a joke)
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday May 31 2014, @03:57AM
Yep, but adding tags is a nuisance, so instead I usually _do_ =this= *shit*.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by Marand on Saturday May 31 2014, @02:32PM
I agree completely, though not having auto-replace for it bothers me, so I suck it up and do the tags, nuisance or not.
That actually makes me wonder if there's some sort of addon or feature for any browsers to convert ** __ etc in text fields into common html or bbcode syntax. I'll have to look later, it might be nice to have if it exists. I recall having that sort of autoreplace in StarOffice/OpenOffice once upon a time and finding it rather useful because the chording required is more convenient.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday May 31 2014, @03:26PM
vBulletin forum software lets you use CTRL-I etc. for basic formatting, but it requires javascript. So it's not like it can't be done natively here.
Not useful for the significant fraction who don't allow js, tho. (I don't, unless a site isn't functional without it, and even then it's a black mark.)
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by Marand on Sunday June 01 2014, @01:05AM
What I was hoping for was specifically being able to replace asterisk and underscore pairs, LibreOffice or Markdown style. Preferably with an addon, because I don't like running JS on every damn site, either.
No addons seem to do it, so I started trying to find Linux text editors that would do it (I use ItsAllText! addon, so same end result if I could find one), but I couldn't find any that would take *thing* and replace with <b>thing</b>. LO still does the conversion to bold, but won't turn it into html formatting with a plain save, so it fails with IAT.
I might keep looking into it, though; there are a lot of editors in Debian's repos, so maybe I'll find one that does it that I can use with IAT.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Sunday June 01 2014, @01:24AM
That's an interesting idea -- ideally such an add-on would be configurable to use angles or brackets, depending on the site (and remember which for a given site), and to either auto-apply or click button to apply, so a person isn't locked into it.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by Maow on Friday May 30 2014, @07:54AM
Well, yeah, except WTF is an acronym whose meaning is appropriate in this case, whereas LOL-tards usually can't even figure out when to laugh out loud or sneer derisively.
One wonders at the inability to discern the difference. :/
(Score: 2) by Marand on Friday May 30 2014, @10:22AM
It was supposed to be a joke; I almost put an emoticon on it to make that clear, but decided it might make a good example to the rest of my post if I didn't ;)
I do agree about the hatred of the image smiley replacement, though. I find them obnoxious and always disable them. Not only are they usually ugly, and the animated ones distracting, but a lot of the extra ones can add confusion about intent. Plus they tend to break in unexpected ways by replacing non-emoticon text.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday May 31 2014, @03:54AM
Emoticons can be used cleverly or annoyingly... we had a fellow on City-Data who would make up stories and have each "face" be a character. Really creative. But I agree they don't need to be used every other word, and it's nice to be able to turn the conversion to images off.
BTW, I enjoyed your homepage. Does it actually do anything or is it for Display Purposes only?
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.