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Comment by nluken | Hacker News Reader

Funny little project, though the days where "lol" meant something was truly funny have long past. The way we use the word today is actually very important to conveying tone over text, and so I don't know if I would call an "lol" without laughter inauthentic as much as it is reflective of a relatively new kind of communication.

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I still use lol to mean "I would've laughed if this was an audio conversation", although of course it does mean anything from a slight giggle to more intense laughter.

A brief exhalation of air from the nose ==> lol

Two brief exhalations of air from the nose in quick succession and a slight smile ==> rofl

A chuckle => "I actually lol'd out loud at this"

> the days where "lol" meant something was truly funny have long past

I genuinely remember when the term was new and its meaning as literally laughing out loud lasted for about as long as milk.

idk. I still accept it from others in text as non-ironic, usually. (A woman in her 30s literally just texted me "lololol" and I have to assume she thought what I said was funny). At some point though, I switched to "hah" or the more expressive "hahaha" as a way to avoid the lol-insincerity trap. That plus some emojis also helps obfuscate how old I am.

"lololol" != "lol". They're two different words these days. I wasn't deriding the modern lol. I think it's actually more useful than it used to be since it works extremely well to define tone in conversation; its meaning has just shifted as language tends to do.

the days where "lol" meant something was truly funny have long past.

Just like in real life, the quality of your conversation depends on the company you keep.

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