LOL

Posted March 30th, 2009 by Rich

The lol theory

Here is something which I had until now been unaware had it’s own theory. Put ‘lol’ into any sentence and you will remove any credibility from it:

- Officer! I need to report a very serious assault, LOL!

- I’m sorry to inform you that on this occasion you have failed the test (lol)

- LOL – It’s worse than that, he’d dead Jim!

- Will you marry me? PMSL

- I am dreadfully sorry we are going to have to amputate your right arm LOLOLOL

I guess the same would be true for actually blurting out with laughter – nevertheless this theory is awesome… and will be worming its way into my life from now on. However! It must not be used in vain… I shall explain:

I overheard the conversation a couple of kids were having on the bus the other day, which contained several instances of the word ‘lol’. Of course I have used it myself before now – I’m only human after all… but I used it more in a trendy ‘post modern’ sort of way – not rubbishly, like these snot nosed little punks were using it.

Here’s what wikipedia reckons:

LOL, ROFL, and other initialisms have crossed from computer-mediated communication to face-to-face communication. Teenagers now sometimes use them in spoken communication as well as in written, with ROFL (pronounced /ˈroÊŠfÉ™l/ or /ˈrÉ’fÉ™l/) and LOL (pronounced /ˈloÊŠl/, /ˈlÉ’l/, or /ˌɛloʊˈɛl/), for example. David Crystal—likening the introduction of LOL, ROFL, and others into spoken language in magnitude to the revolution of Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of movable type in the 15th century—states that this is “a brand new variety of language evolving”, invented by young people within five years, that “extend[s] the range of the language, the expressiveness [and] the richness of the language”. Commentators disagree, saying that these new words, being abbreviations for existing, long-used, phrases, don’t “enrich” anything; they just shorten it.

Those pesky kids with their jeans and sneakers

So in summary, get using abbreviations! in five years we will be that much more effective at communication due to its brevity, which will also be (questionably) enriched!

but no using ‘fyi’ in sentences – we’re not in the 20th century any more – losers.

Epilogue

it pleases me that wikipedia has an article for lolz