This was a text my friend received when we were about 14, from his mum, and ironically, it was one of the only times that “lol” has actually resulted in a genuine peal of laughter. The mum in question had not meant to send “lol” as we’d use it today. Instead, she thought it stood for “Lots of Love”, which, at one point in time, it definitely might’ve.
Back in ye olden days of the internet, when you had to type out words letter by letter on a keyboard, text language was a critical part of fast communication, so abbreviations like “lol” quickly became ubiquitous. But while other phrases like TTYL have somewhat faded away, “lol” has made sure it’s here to stay. Part of the reason for this success is that it has evolved from a literal acronym to a word in its own right. And the way we use “lol” has changed, as well. We don’t actually intend to say that we’re laughing out loud, of course. Instead, it’s used almost as a punctuation mark, a way to lighten up a sentence, a way to say “but this is casual”.
Critic reached out to Dr. Anne Feryok in the Linguistics Department for her take on the situation. Anne said that “lol” serves a few purposes, but has certainly evolved from its original use. “It once was ‘laugh out loud’, and it kind of still is, but it's actually functioning most of the time in another way now, and you’re more likely to be misunderstood if you use it the original way… but we misunderstand each other all the time, that’s part of the human condition.”
“There’s this kind of mutuality of understanding when you stick it at the end of a text message,” explained Anne. The person who tacks “lol” on the end, “they know the other person is going to understand what they mean, they know the other person doesn't think it's actually ‘laugh out loud’, [instead] it's showing ‘we understand each other’. Showing that we’re on the same page with each other.” This is called a “phatic function”.
Anne likened it to rhetorical questions, like “oh, isn’t that so cute?”. When we ask that question, said Anne, “we’re not actually expecting someone to say ‘yeah that really is cute’. I mean, we do kind of expect somebody to respond that way, but we're not actually asking a question.” The use of a question mark there, or its verbal equivalent, is not meant to be taken literally. “If I think it's cute, that's good enough,” said Anne. “When I say ‘isn't it’, I'm not actually seeking agreement with other people. I'm just drawing you into the conversation to share a moment. I think ‘lol’ has become something like that.”
But it serves another purpose too, as a “softener”. According to Anne, a softening “lol” can mean “don’t take this too seriously, WE are not taking this too seriously.” Like “so I’ve said this, but let's not get too into it, let’s ratchet everything down,” something you may recognise in the form “You up? Lol”. Anne described this use as a sort of “dial it down utterance”. Kendal, a student we ambushed, agreed with this. She said she uses “lol” when she is “conveying sarcasm in response to something, like it's satirical, like to say that this isn't actually funny, but it’s not serious, unless?”. Kendal reckoned that the original “lol” was the precursor to the laughing emoji, and that she only ever used it to mean “laugh out loud” in the mid 2010’s, but now it “means something else”.
And we can see that all the time, in the way we use “lol”. It’s very rarely used in its literal form, unless you’re in that select group of boomers who were around to see its birth but aren’t internet-savvy enough to recognize what it’s grown up to be. These days, when we use it, it’s usually as a reply to a meme, a way of saying “yep, I saw that, and I agree that it was funny”, or as something you tack onto the end of something potentially edgy to say “but don’t take me too seriously here”. Maddy, another student, agreed. Her use of “lol” was “sorta as punctuation, or if I feel like something is a bit too serious-feeling or hard to convey. But sometimes it's also to express irony, or it could be almost self-derogatory, like ‘I’m such a piece of shit, lol’. It makes everything feel much less existential and weird. If I’m actually laughing at something I’ll use ‘hahaha’ or ‘lmfao’. Lol is more punctuation for me.” In this response, we saw her use “lol” in three different ways: to express sarcasm, as a phatic function, and as a softener. We checked her messages, and Maddy’s last use of “lol” was as a phatic function, a response to a compliment, to which she said “lol thanks bro”.
This versatility has earned “lol” a very adaptable spot in modern discourse. Since it can be used almost anywhere, it’s become common to the point where we don’t even spell out the entire acronym. “Lol”, itself, is now a word. Recently on an episode of The Chase, a question asked about common text abbreviations. The answers were “FYI”, “TTYL”, and “LOL”, and the announcer, who we might expect to be in that boomer-era bracket that doesn’t really “get it”, read F.Y.I and T.T.Y.L as acronyms, but pronounced “lol” as a singular word. How hip and cool of him. It appears that “lol” has fully entered the mainstream, and has jumped from acronym (technically an initialism) to a bona fide word, joining the ranks of “scuba” and “radar”.
The way we speak is way different than the way we write. We don’t need to punctuate our out-loud discourse, since we can use intonation and pauses instead. But on the page, where those nuances are absent, we use a range of punctuation to fill in the context. Texting is somewhere in between. It’s not formal, like writing, but nor is it casual to the point of not needing any punctuation at all, like with speaking. In this grey area, we’ve adapted “lol” to be anything we need it to be: a softener, a marker of mutual understanding, or as a punchline. And it’s proven to be so useful that some people have plucked it from the world of text-speak and brought it into the spoken world. ‘Laugh Out Loud’ may have not survived the mutation of “lol”, but in a sweet sort of coincidence, the ‘out loud’ part seems to have come full circle. Lol.