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  • 2️⃣115: The Death of LOL

2️⃣115: The Death of LOL

that wasn't very LMFAO of you

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The last message I ever sent to a beeper was to my mom, and it ended with “te quiero.”

It was so awkward.

I sent the message using a payphone en la marginal de Expreso Martínez Nadal in Guaynabo, Puerto Rico. The payphone was on the sidewalk between a gas station and a hardware store. The message was to let my mom know my grandma had picked me up from school, and we were almost home. Right after I said “te quiero” out loud, I paused for a moment and thought, “I just said te quiero to someone I've never met before.”

Even though the message was for my mom, I was verbally saying te quiero to a stranger on the other end of the phone. Someone who knew nothing about me or the person receiving the message.

It made me wonder things like:

Do you think the people at the beeper call center ever had to stop themselves from laughing out loud at some messages?

What was the gossip like during the lunch breaks at the beeper call center?

Can you imagine spending all day collecting private communications between countless strangers? Personal messages, declarations of love, fights, disagreements, anything and everything. I’m sure the people who worked in these places have tons of stories about the messages they had to relay and crazy things they heard.

But those days are over now.

Shortly after the beeper erabefore we got cellphonesonline chat rooms became a thing. Personally, I never went into a random chatroom to talk to people I didn’t know. That’s never been something that attracted me. There were plenty of people in my immediate vicinity I preferred to chat with.

At the beginning, AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) was the most popular messaging spot, but shortly after, MSN Messenger and ICQ became the go-to spaces. It was on these platforms that I jumped on the opportunity to talk to people I normally didn’t interact with. Like most preadolescent boys, that usually meant a girl I had a crush on.

Conversations went something like this:

ME: eyyyyy

HER: olaaaaaaa

cmo stas?

bn y tu

bn bn..y que

na aki, y tu

tmbn

This was the pivotal moment in the conversation. The make-or-break moment. From here, the conversation could go one of two ways.

ONE: We had perfect chemistry and a great conversation flow. We'd spend hours back and forth getting to know each other and talking about everything.

TWO: That was it. That was the end of the conversation. Nothing was said after this because she didn't have any interest in talking to me.

Many conversations I had ended like option number two. But early on in my chatting days, there was one girl that was different. She was one year older than me and from another school. Our conversations used to flow in a way I'd never experienced in my life before (as a middle schooler). A constant back and forth, telling me about how school is going, asking what plans I had for the weekend—casual things you talk about with people you’re interested in.

During these early days of digital chatting, the acronyms we know and love/hate today were still new on the scene. Particularly for me, I had no idea what “lol” meant. And let me tell you, this girl said “lol” A LOT. Every other message I sent, she responded with “lol.” As the lols kept rolling in, I thought to myself, “I need to find out what the fuck this means.” We had Google back then, but it wasn’t the go-to source of information that it is today (or was at some point anyway). And I wasn’t about to go ask my friends because I wanted to keep these conversations private. Seeing as I had no other options, I used my excellent power of deduction to discern what this mysterious “lol” meant. Through that method, I decided that “lol” was another way to say “ok.”

That was simple. I figured it out quick. I'm so proud of myself 🤓

If you're reading this laughing at me, I get it. My clueless 12-year-old self had no idea what she was trying to say to me. When I finally “figured it out,” I was utterly mistaken. But I don't think the fault is totally on me. I'd like to put some blame on her as well. It was particularly difficult for me to figure out what “lol” meant from the context of our conversations because she kept responding “lol” to almost everything I said!

na aqui cansao de la escuela

lol

i don't want to go to school tomorrow

lol

about to watch this new show called LOST

lol

going to Plaza to the movies on Friday, y tu?

same lol

we lost our soccer game today 14-0

lol

Since I had no idea what it meant, I took it as a sign that she was engaged in the conversation but didn't know what else to say (lolololol). You'd think that I would get suspicious at one point, but I never did. I was just happy to be talking to her. This wasn't a one- or two-time thing. We had these conversations almost every night for several weeks. One day, I decided to show her I was hip to the lingo. I knew exactly what she was loling about. I was loling too. Maybe we could even lol together!

So I did the only thing I thought would work—I started saying “lol” back. My friends, I started saying “lol” to every single fucking thing she said. I had no idea what “lol” was, but I was loling it up like it was going to help me win the lottery.

Shortly after that, our conversations ended. (LOL)

The more I said “lol,” the less she responded. Things started slowing down until she finally stopped responding. She left that chat window dryer than the lake from Camp Green Lake 🏜️

It wasn't long after our conversations ended that I discovered the real meaning of “lol.”

LAUGHING. OUT. LOUD.

That’s exactly what I did when I found out. It was all I could do to stop myself from wallowing in self-pity.

That's why I'm here today to air out my grievances against lol. Despite what this email may have you think, I'm not anti-lol. I love lol. I lol it up all the time. I like to lol, lololol, LMAO, and even rofl when the mood strikes (which it rarely does these days).

Lol is such an exquisite form of expression that it has become ubiquitous among humans. Lol transcends countries, cultures, and languages. Lol might be one of the most enduring forms of written communication that has ever existed and will ever exist.

That's right, I'm not here against lol. I'm here because I love lol. I love lol so much; I want to see lol used to its full potential. I want lol to be a force for good in the world. I want Millennials to keep loling and responding with GIFs to messages for years to come. LOL in the face of Gen Z-ers who think we're growing lame. You think you're cooler than us now because you're younger and have your finger on the pulse of popular culture? That very well may be true, but we did it before you. We paved the way for you to lol, meme, and skibidi-toilet your brain into mush. Much like Gen X did for us Millennials (jk, lol).

One of the most beautiful things about lol is that it's rarely used today with its original meaning. Lol has taken a life of its own and grown into a full lexicon. Those three little letters, L-O-L, can mean anything and everything.

A 2022 Vice article by Shayla Love dove deep into the many meanings behind the notorious phrase when she spoke with a Professor of English Linguistics:

Célia Schneebeli, a linguist at the University of Burgundy, considers lol to be best linguistically described as a discourse marker or pragmatic marker.

Discourse markers are words that help structure a sentence, or orient fragments of text to context, and past or upcoming sentences.

Pragmatic markers are bits of language that communicate a person's attitude, and enhance the meaning of a sentence without being specifically descriptive of that meaning.

A lol at the end of a sentence can invalidate everything that was said before or emphasize it like no other word can.

In 2016, six years before Shayla spoke with Dr. Schneebeli, Megan Garber wrote a piece for The Atlantic inspired by Kim Kardashian's use of LOL in a naked mirror selfie. In it, she describes the extent of lol’s evolution: “While the term has certainly stopped meaning, literally, 'laughing out loud,' it has also ceased to indicate—to a large extent, if not the full one—'laughter' of any kind at all.”

She finishes the piece highlighting the brilliance of lol, stating it has become a punctuation mark in itself. “lol…occupies the spot where, in more formal English, a period would be.”

Even before Megan, John McWhorter, who Megan quotes in her writing, stated in 2013 for CNN,

That is, “LOL” no longer “means” anything. Rather, it “does something” — conveying an attitude, just as the ending “-ed” doesn’t “mean” anything but conveys past tense. LOL is, of all things, grammar.

I could spend all day reading and learning about the evolution and different linguistic meanings of lol. But I doubt that's why you're reading my emails. You want to know what I really think. To understand that, we need to look at a more recent piece of writing. In 2024, Brittany Wong wrote a piece for HuffPost attempting to decipher why Millennials are so fond of the three-letter phrase. In it, she mentions:

It defuses the potential for hostility in personal relationships, too. “Could you wash the dishes, lol” to your spouse or roommate sounds a lot better than a coarse, curtly communicated, “Could you wash the dishes.”

This is where I have my bone to pick with lol. Specifically, for people who are 30 and older. If you're younger than 30, you still have a few years to go wild with lol in any way you want. If you're older, it's time to tighten up.

Adding lol at the end of a sentence because you're scared to say what you need to say or because you're scared of how the other person might respond is a coward's way out. That's not to say any time you want to soften a message with lol is cowardly. If you wake up hungover and feel like something went wrong last night, texting think I may have drank too much last night lol works great. Even if it means that someone will respond with, Everyone would agree, David. That's why they body slammed you into the beer pong table at 4 am. No more details for that story. That's all you need to know lol

Now, if David (some other David, not the one writing this email) were to text an apology that went, sorry about that shit I did last night lol, that is the cowardly thing to do. Instead, he should confront his mistakes and make amends. Adding a “lol” at the end would free him from the responsibility of owning his statement, of owning what he did wrong.

It’s not just when you do things wrong, but when you want to send a message. Can you imagine if Logan Roy decided he needed to soften what he said by adding a “lol”?

This:

Doesn’t hit the same as this:

Or this:

People use lol as a way to stop themselves from saying something they really want to say. If you have something to say, say it. If you have something to declare, declare it. It doesn’t mean you have to be an asshole, or unkind, or rude, or forget regular human decency. It means that sometimes you need to have difficult conversations, and ignoring them won’t make your problems go away.

We need to stop using lol because we’re too scared of saying what we really want to say.

We’ve defaulted to ignoring things that bother us and finding a passive-aggressive way of releasing that anger without actually doing anything about the issue in the first place. I’m no psychologist, but I think they would say deploying lol in the way most Millennials deploy it would be a defense mechanism. A way of deflecting what’s really bothering us. But, more than that, I feel like we’ve begun to just put lol wherever we want without realizing the consequences of using it.

Yes, sometimes a good lol will let the other person know exactly what you think about a topic. But other times it can feel like a poke that’s trying to tell us something is wrong without actually having to say that something is wrong. Since most of our communications today happen digitally via written words, it’s difficult to discern how people feel from a simple text lacking any other context.

If you’ve got something to say, say it. Don’t be scared.

If you’re sick and tired of your roommate never washing the dishes and all the responsibilities falling on you, then tell them. I know it’s an awkward conversation, I’ve had a few like that myself. But those conversations are the only way to change the things that need to change. The only way to work through friction with people you love.

If you don’t have them, some things will never change. You can put yourself in a slightly uncomfortable situation to work on something that’s bothering, or you can say fuck it and ignore that shit ‘til it grows so big inside you, it bursts out in some sort of embarrassing and emotional confrontation you’ll think about for the rest of your life, lol

PS

A thoughtfully crafted email feels like a letter. Something written just for the person who’s reading it. But that letter isn’t for just one person, it can be for hundreds or even thousands. Each reader gets to have a unique experience without being influenced by comments or likes. That’s why emails are so beautiful to me.

I’ve been a fan of emails since long before I started 2UESDAY. I remember being one of the earliest subscribers to The Skimm and The Hustle around 2016-2018, when that type of newsletter was just taking off. Those were great when they started, but they got so big and dense that eventually it became a chore to read them. So I unsubscribed.

Recently, I discovered 1440. Not through my own online prowess, but because they offered to place an ad in my emails. So I decided to subscribe and take a look at a few of their emails before recommending it to you. Let me tell you, I love it. It sums up stories in a sentence or two by just telling you the facts (and not in the way Roca News tells you the facts that always seem to favor whatever people who listen to Joe Rogan think). They tell you straight up what happened without leaning to one side or the other, and then provide a good source for you to dive deeper into on your own.

If you’re into news but feel like you just don’t have the time to read it all, give this newsletter a shot.

Looking for unbiased, fact-based news? Join 1440 today.

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