If you use 'haha', you're probably old

In my personal experience "ha ha" is an almost default result of trying to avoid "lol." Why I try to avoid lol is a deeper question, but it has to do with AOL and how AOL looked from Compuserve in the early 90's. Anyway, yes I'm old.

Interestingly enough, I use "Haha" to denote sincere laughing. Mischievous laughing goes as "Hehe"; imitating an overweight person goes "Hoho" and normally imitating a timid person (or a woman, and I swear they are not related!) goes as "Hihi."

All of these have different meanings to me:

ha haha hah aha ahaha 'ha ha' hahaha HA HAHAHA hahahahahahah haaahaaa lol LOL LMAO lawl elohel 'ha, ha' ha. heh hehe bwahaha 'ha,'

though it's really hard to describe exactly the differences between them.

context: I'm in my twenties and grew up using AIM and FB and playing MMOs. I think those are all relevant to the exact 'vernacular' I've ended up with.

I have enough Latin American Facebook friends that "jejeje" is starting to seem like the canonical e-laugh.

In Arabic, people use هههه (hhhh) without vowels because of the Arabic Harakat (حَرَكَات) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_diacritics

interestingly, in Korea the laugh is keke / kek / kkkk / etc., while in Japan the laugh is w / www / etc.

Kind of like how animal sounds are very different across countries and cultures.

The cool kids don't say 'lol' any more because uncool old people have started using it.

Not it's all about 'lel' or 'kek'

If it's really funny 'top kek'

In Thailand 'haha' is used extensively but it is written 55 because in Thai the number 5 sounds like 'ha'. So it's a useful shorthand.

I'd add that "bwahaha" comes across as a laugh at a person's expense.

Another 'haha'er here. I can't stand LOL, though this TED [1] talk gives an interesting look at its use.

[1]http://www.ted.com/talks/john_mcwhorter_txtng_is_killing_lan...

The first paragraph resonated with me a little bit. When I was younger (14-16) I'd always try to type as correctly and "seriously" as possible. I literally thought everyone who didn't do the same was just stupid. My IMing style is pretty much the opposite nowadays. And as much as one hates being biased I have to admit I still judge people on their typing style a bit. It's pretty hard to gauge one's tone/feeling/attitude without having all the hahas, emoticons, smileys, redundant words etc. Do they not like me? Are they trying to be rude? Are they being creepy? Are they just not much of an internet chatter? Is that just an aspie-like trait?

I used "haha" mostly to avoid saying "lol." As crazy as it sounds, I got too lazy to keep doing that. Lol is all wIth one hand, and doesn't denote true laughter. It's more, "I received your message" than anything.

In Thailand, the default is "555" since the word five in Thai is pronounced "ha". Everyone in Thailand knows what it means, and the rest of the world must think we're crazy.

And if you use muahaha you're probably a villain of some kind.

On a side note, my personal favourite is the Bender laugh... "AHEHAEHAEHAHEAHE". It denotes forced amusement with a side of cynicism. And it's brilliant.

'hihi' or 'hi hi' is another, fairly rare, written variant that is used as laughter in morse code, and has migrated to written text by people that commonly use morse code.

I'm not sure the exact reason, but it does make all the letter dits. 'ha' is spelled .... .-, but 'hi' is spelled .... ..

Fifteen years ago, I got temporarily banned from an English-speaking IRC channel (#gamedev on AfterNET) for my part in instigating the ironic usage of "kekeke", which was very well known at the time due to the popularity of Starcraft in South Korea.

It feels weird using "hehe". I type it exactly how I laugh, "haha hahahahahahaha". Although if I feel I might look stupid I try to tone it down with a simple ":D" or the emoji with the laughter to tears.

Oh and I'm 22 ;)

Reminds me of this http://www.lolwithme.org/wp-content/uploads/hahahahah.jpg

In my experience and if I'm remembering correctly, hehe and haha were equally common on the dial up BBSs. I've used both all these years.

I don't think the connotations have changed!

the oldest 'haha' in chinese word is from a book called Water Margin,written 600 years ago. that's really old.

english version: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_Margin chinese version: http://baike.baidu.com/view/11282.htm

A friend who spent some time in France always write MDR (mort de rire - "dying of laughter"). Before she went she was a hardcore LOLer.

What a meaningless parade of speculative bullshit. There's a science for discussions like this -- it's called corpus linguistics. There are people who have spent years of their lives trying to understand observed patterns in behavior using real data and statistical analysis. This a handful of anecdotes that even the most generative of armchair linguists would roll their eyes at.

I always took he he as a making fun of, like Nelson from the Simpsons.

Has the New Yorker ran out of ideas for important issues to cover? It's funny, granted, but with everything going on in Baltimore and Nepal, it seems misplaced or at last badly timed.

Haha :-)

We have `kek` and `w`.

What about kekeke?

I love the movie "marmaduke"