Lol

Say what you want about textspeak, but, the proverbial bastard child spawned from that fateful one-night-stand between the English Language and the Internet in the mid-2000s– played a major role in streamlining conversation.

Looking back at our texting habits in the late aughts - it's cringe-y thinking about it. But back then it was all the rage. And why wouldn't it be? Textspeak was basically a medium that conveyed thought, body language, and pitch through a screen using a minimalist combination of strategically placed characters, substitutive letters, and numerals. From capitalization to suggest emphasis, to asterisk enclosed stage directions indicating supposed physical action-- textspeak rendered actual physical conversation redundant. 

But while we hid behind the screen of anonymity, trolling various chat rooms on the internet, the expression of one emotion remained essential, and that was laughter. With the world of funnies just a click away, internet residents came up with a whole assortment of ways to convey laughter online. From the handy LOL- laugh out loud, to a whole variety of other acronyms for laughter, such as LMAO, ROFL, ROFLOL for laughing my ass off and rolling on the floor laughing (out loud), each of which could be capitalized and/or punctuated with an expletive for emphasis.

Fast-forward to ten years later: the rise of the smartphone and autocorrect rendered textspeak extinct. Today, we don't use irrelevant acronyms to save time on keystrokes or substitute numerals for letters anymore-- we don't need to. And when we laugh we prefer typing out each individual ha-ha syllable or using a string of emojis to convey the degree of our laughter. But in the midst of this communication evolution, one universal remnant of textspeak has endured, namely, “LOL”.

This nuanced expression has indeed slipped into our mainstream phraseology. But the once universal symbol for the funnies has long since abandoned the lexicon for laughter, sailing through the steady current of a semantic shift over time. 

The term LOL is what linguistics call a “pragmatic particle," like your typical colloquialisms such as “um” or “like” which basically have no semantic meaning, and are just taken to be indicative of informal speech or lack of eloquence. No longer is the meaning of LOL so clear-cut as standing for Laugh Out Loud, and not as we had to keep reminding our mothers, not Lots of Love. 

At the height of Yahoo Messenger and Orkut, the ever-popular LOL was our go-to response for anything and everything remotely entertaining. Of course, taking a LOL at face value would suggest someone bordering on hysteria. And even then, when we sent those three little characters out into the void, we weren't actually laughing out loud as suggested. As a universal symbol of laughter, however, the term LOL seemed apt.

The intricacies of this seemingly neutral word, today, has become so layered, that it's meaning is now completely ambiguous-- the once jolly marker of supposed laughter has evolved into the jack-of-all-trades equivalent of expressing sentiment, hosting a flexible range of uses. 

LOL is now used as a social buffer, a term whose varied meanings are mutually acknowledged and understood by frequent texters. You could preface a statement with LOL to flag it as one that is supposed to be funny, or casually drop a LOL at the end of a text to signal irony. A strategically placed LOL is sometimes used as a discourse marker to soften the tone of a particular statement and at other times as a dismissive and condescending expression. Today it’s not surprising when LOL is used in verbal conversation. 

Whether you're an unashamed LOL abuser or not, the kind of language that is being created online has been weaselling its way into everyday use for years and affecting day-to-day speech patterns, and, thusly, deserves much speculation—even to the point of overthinking. 

In defence of millennials everywhere accused of the bastardization of the English Language with our texting shorthand, I just want to say it's the opposite. By coming up with increasingly creative ways to express tone and emphasis when facial cues are not an option is enough proof that we are, in fact, revolutionizing the English Language.

Withdrawal

I'm hopelessly in love with a whole vortex of memories. From putting a bullet in his head in that first-shooter game, to simply waltzing at midnight to that overplayed Owl City song. And I'm tempted to go back.

He wasn't the kind of person who brought out the best in you. 

Or the worst, for that matter. No; he was one of those incredibly rare, incredibly addictive souls, who just brought out the most in you. Of everything. He had the ability to make you feel so alive, so euphoric, that you'd be willing to drop everything, and follow him across the nine hells and back, just to keep getting your fix.

So here I am twitching in frustration, because I can't get my fix. Withdrawal.

And then, I'm back there. In that golden field, the sun in our eyes, the taste of cheap beer on our lips. It feels like a moment stolen right out of the pages of Byron and Wordsworth. In the maddening stillness. Away. Alone. With you. Comparing scars and quoting the romantics.

"Let's never leave." I say. 

A few minutes later we are dusting bits of grass and traces of each other off our clothes and hurrying back to make it in time for our next class.

I.iii.78

They say you can tell a lot about a person by the kind of underwear they wear. Me? I was always about as adventurous as my cotton reasonably-priced three packs.

Somewhere along the way that changed.

You see, not to be that person, but well, shit happens. Things fall apart; the center cannot hold. And it only seems fitting to act out in retaliation, do something crazy, maybe even a little Elvis-y like putting a bullet in your television set. Or you know, the pedestrian equivalent– 

Like impulsively getting a dramatic haircut or highlights in a bright shade of pink. Maybe getting a few piercings, or even a back tattoo. Or you could choose to find comfort in making out with crappy boys, sneaking cigarettes into your bedroom, partying way too hard and guzzling way too much alcohol just because it makes you feel invincible for those five seconds. Then you attempt to balance your giant shame spiral by binge-watching every adaptation of Wuthering Heights ever made while nursing a bad hangover and eating stale french-fries from the day before in bed. 

I'd know. Because in the last couple years, I sprinted through all of these phases. And why? Not because I'd been feeling particularly rebellious but merely because I'd just been trying to keep up with all the constant change happening around me. And the only way I could see how, was to take Gandhi's be the change dictum waaay too literally and change myself. Rejecting everything I was and trying on different selves like they were hats— to the point of self destruction. Because when everything feels like it's slipping away, all you desperately want to do is prove that there are some things in your life that you can control, right? Right.

And for a while it felt good. To be able to burn the candle at both ends, carpe-ing the fuck out of diem, making all the mistakes, for all of the crazy stories I could tell the next day.

But here I am now. It takes no life-altering epiphany, maybe just a particularly bad hangover, to become drastically aware of the state of mediocrity that you currently reside in, to finally realize that maybe it's time to take some proactive steps to better your life. No, I'm not talking about going on a juice cleanse or burning all your junk food or anything as ridiculous. I'm talking about being true "to thine own self", the way Polonius intended for his son Laertes in Hamlet; because maybe I'm not built for downing five shots of rum neat. Deep down I know I haven't changed at all. I'm still that girl who makes bad puns and is too scared to watch horror movies alone.