It’s painful when the internet roasts you – and even worse when it’s right. When a viral post mocked millennials for using LOL like punctuation, I felt personally attacked.
“Millennials use ‘lol’ like STOP at the end of a telegram lol,” wrote @gaulicsmith.
(“Sorry about that lol,” someone responded.)
What could I say? For this millennial, the dig was accurate. My personal texts and work chats are littered with LOLs. It’s not enough to say I forgot about something – instead, it’s “I forgot lol.” I’m not just on a shopping break – “I’m banned from buying clothes until 2026 lol”.
Action was required. I decided to stop saying LOL for a week; I had been thinking about quitting anyway.
I’m not an early adopter; I wasn’t LOLing in internet relay chat (IRC) channels in 1999 or anything. But honestly, I don’t remember a time when I didn’t LOL. Perhaps I leaned harder on it when I started working in digital media, so I could message my colleagues in an aggressively friendly way that ensured nobody would misconstrue my personality for boring or stern. Really, it’s like a clown tooting a horn: Parp-parp! I’m fun and nice, and nobody could ever be mad at me!
Indeed, my professional communiques were strewn with this conversational confetti. When I floated the idea of quitting, colleagues indicated it was basically part of my personality. “I never used LOL before talking to you all day long,” said my editor. “It’ll be a tough week in Slack … I’ll be convinced I’m flopping,” said a reporter.
To be clear, there’s no judgment here. LOL is useful! Sometimes, you really are LOL. Or maybe you’re injecting levity when reminding someone to take out the trash. But my usage was so high I felt irritated. It was a sloppy tic, both tedious and unserious. I also wondered if it was an emotional crutch. Couldn’t I just say what I think or ask a question without this nervous little addition?
I wanted to keep myself honest. Every time I typed LOL into a text field, it went onto a list. Often, I used it without thinking; twice, I sent a message before catching the LOL and deleting it.
At the end of the week, I’d typed LOL 24 times. A sampling, annotated with the purpose (all lower-case, obviously – don’t forget I’m a millennial):
i’d have to go to a store and try on a pair and buy that pair lol (translation: I’m lazy)
ok leaving now lol (translation: I’m late)
therapy was good, just talking about all my trauma lol (translation: feelings are embarrassing)
i’m gonna call the spa and see if i can get a massage lol (translation: no idea about this one)
My colleagues were right. LOL was baked into my communication style.
***
I don’t consider LOL inherently problematic. Despite the viral post about LOL being millennial-speak, gen Z have adopted it too, and serious complaints about it are no longer common.
Over a decade ago, linguist John McWhorter argued that LOL had morphed from a way to denote that you’re actually laughing into grammar in a 2013 article for CNN.
“No mentally composed human being spends his or her entire life immersed in ceaseless hilarity. The LOLs must mean something else,” he wrote. Instead, it signals an “attitude”, conveying “nuance in a system where you don’t have the voice and face to do it the way you normally would”.
Célia Schneebeli, a linguist, told Vice that LOL can be described as a discourse marker – a word that “helps structure a sentence, or orient fragments of text to context, and past or upcoming sentences”. The Atlantic’s Megan Garber argued in 2016 that it was basically punctuation, “expressing the kind of meta-emotion that is very easy to make clear in in-person conversations and very difficult to make clear in other kinds”.
I talked to Dr Albert Bonfil, director of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Los Angeles. He said that, of course, humans haven’t always texted. Historically, in formal contexts like a business letter, people conveyed tone in other ways, such as vocabulary and format. But now, we default to text, email and chat.
“Text, especially a short text, can come across as harsh or curt,” he said. LOL and similar placeholders can be a “digital form of body language”, softening statements, or communicating friendliness and understanding. But it can also come off as a nervous tic, he said.
***
My first couple of LOL-less days were unbelievably annoying. Every time I typed it – and there were many times – I felt frustrated. I judged myself. A dopamine-starved itch would descend – kind of like the time I tried to quit sugar.
But soon, I was depending on it less and less.
Reviewing my list of LOLs, I discerned some patterns. Often, I was trying to loosen up a practical conversation – the function of a facial expression or body language in an IRL conversation.
There are, however, “more insidious” uses, said Bonfil. And for me, LOL predictably emerged when I was feeling embarrassed or vulnerable. I was obviously allergic to expressing tough emotions without a soft cushion.
“This is actually something that comes up with my clients all the time,” said Bonfil. “A client will say something that’s really emotionally charged, then they’ll laugh it off or make some kind of snide or sarcastic comment as an aside.”
It telegraphs to the listener to interpret something in a lighthearted way, Bonfil said. “You’re going to get a less serious response in return unless somebody’s really savvy.”
Social norms can play into this, says Rishika Singh, a therapist based in Brooklyn, New York. In western culture, “there’s almost an expectation to end with something light. So you might say, ‘Oh, I’m having a really hard week – but that’s OK.’”
One’s culture of origin is also relevant. Typically, in the context of her own South Asian background, Singh said, “the reason to talk about a feeling is to look for a solution”. Lightening the mood with a LOL might convey that you actually don’t need help or that you don’t want to linger on the topic – both useful things to communicate.
But should I be desisting at work? The experts I spoke to said slang can be problematic and misunderstood in the workplace. My colleagues obviously had no problems with me constantly LOLing, but if I were to use slang that isn’t universally recognized, that might undercut my integrity, said Richard West, professor of communication studies at Emerson College. “I don’t know very many hiring managers during an interview that would really enjoy you saying ‘my bad,’” he said.
In formal contexts, it’s smart to think about reflection and consequence. “If people are going to use slang, they need to read the room. They need to understand that there’s a consequence and reflect on it before they start inserting it into their language,” said West.
***
By the end of the week, the hardest part was deciding what to say instead of LOL. Just three letters can convey actual laughter, conspiratorial glee or chagrin. What were the alternatives?
I’d already taken the first step of noticing how automatic my usage was, said Singh. Next, I needed to figure out what I actually wanted to convey.
Taking some deep breaths before writing a text can help, said Bonfil. In therapy, he uses cognitive restructure, “a way of looking at your assumptions about why [a behavior] is threatening or might have a negative outcome”.
Saying I’d had a good therapy session, for instance, might have risked being a downer. But when I sent the text sans LOL, no lightning bolts struck me down for being too open with my friends. It turns out you can just be honest! Crazy.
“A lot of people are often really concerned that assertive communication will backfire, and they’ll ruin relationships. Nine out of 10 times, people are really pleasantly surprised at the response – it’s nice to tell people what’s actually going on because then they can respond in a way that’s appropriate,” said Bonfil.
As for friendliness or humor, a validating comment or compliment can communicate “a heck of a lot more than LOL”, he said.
***
Going LOL-less had an impact. A quick tally reveals that I have only LOLed 8 times in the past week – a significant decrease. And I’ve felt less freaked out about texting an honest update or earnest request for assistance. Yet that same tally reveals my friends have continued LOLing their asses off. Which is fine – maybe we just love being in touch and joking around. So what? Nothing bad about that! LOL.
