I've blogged about this before, and will likely blog about this again, but for the love of the FSM can we all agree to stop the rampant abuse of the LOL? Of all the myriad and egregious internetty sins, this is the worst. It is worse than sharing poorly sourced and obviously untrue nonsense simply to shore up your own already well known opinion. It is worse than leaving vague and self-pitying status updates. It is not really the worst. It is not worse than spouting racist/sexist nonsense. It is is still TEH WORST! Let's all agree to stop it.
Derisive disapprobation. There's a new profile of Megyn Kelley in Vanity Fair, in which they refer to her as "a conservative champion who transcends politics with her skillful skewering of windbags of both parties." LOL.
Someone ELSE Says Something Funny. People say funny stuff on the Internet. When you find something amusing that someone else has said and would like to let them know that you found it amusing, but are maybe running late for a meeting or have to pee or something, just throw an "LOL" at them in the comments.
Don't say "LOL" to confirm that what you just said is funny. That's lame. You know that guy who laughs super loud at his own dumb dick jokes? Don't be that guy. That guy sucks.
And don't say something shitty and then follow it up with an "LOL". That kind of self-LOL doesn't mitigate the shittiness of the sentence it follows. Rather it makes it a helluva lot shittier. It means you've gotten to say something shitty but now feel inoculated from objection to your shittiness.
In the interest of transparency, I went and got my feelings super hurt by such a Facebook comment yesterday (comment has since been deleted by moi). And while I recognize that I'm being sensitive, a little childish and a lot passive-aggressive in working this out in my blog, I don't care. It's my damn blog. And I shall continue to preach to my massive readership (all three of you) that there is almost never a good reason to stick an LOL after something you've just yourself said.
So, let's remember this going forward: don't LOL yourself. LOL-ing yourself will cause hair to grow on your palms. When you LOL yourself, you make Jesus cry. Your dead grandparents are watching you LOL. I use this metaphor on purpose. I'm saying that it's a form of social media masturbation.
LOL.
