Am millennial and have never once used that acronym. I always just type "haha" instead... haha
this post was submitted on 16 Apr 2026
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Am millenial, I've used both lol and haha, since... I dunno, 1996?
I distinctly remember the first time I accidentally said 'lol' outloud, as a single syllable, at the end of a sentence.
Right haha, think the "lol" was gen x.
Millennials were ABSOLUTELY all about the lols, I can assure you. It was the most widely used acronym everywhere (second being brb, I would wager).
We roflcopter'd and roflmao'd with the best of em! lol
It's pretty common with millenials at least
I used/use it a lot, became the standard when I was on AIM.
Mostly I feel people use it for tone and switch between the two. Then again I also respond with k too often apparently and have had spouses bring it up to me. "I'm going to pick up hot dog buns on the way home" k is apparently not always the proper response to such things apparently.
K, lol, cool/kool, alright, nice, oh... Apparently make up a lot of what she calls my NPC responses.
It's not that I don't care, it's that there really isn't a reason for me to send a flushed out response while I'm in a rush and or trying to respond at a red light. I'll see them soon, if i thought something else should be picked up at the store when they were there id either say so or call if I thought it warranted a quick discussion.
If I ask do you want tacos, sure is a perfectly valid response, we've shared a bed for 5 years.. if I don't know what you do and don't like on a taco I wasn't paying attention, if you want something you usually wouldn't, then it makes sense to say more
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I'm a millennial and I use lol way too often to start or end messages
But plenty of millennials did for sure. I'm 1987, was never a loler myself, but am certainly familiar enough with it.
And admittedly, I have used it. My buddy and I used to sit in his room playing red alert 2, and one of us would do something dumb and the other would type "lol," and then look across the room with a straight face. So I always imagined someone typing lol to be doing so with a completely straight face, the complete opposite of laughing out loud.
1987 as well... i just never caught on to the acronyms.
BTW love the whole C&C franchise
Ope... i said BTW.. guess I contradicted myself. Oops.
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I tend to reserve haha for conveying mildly interesting observations in a nonthreatening manner
"You must be their best customer to know that, haha"
Same.
'haha' is more polite/cordial, more passive and may indicate essentially nervous laughter
'lol' is more blunt/informal, more aggressive and may potentially indicate mockery
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Tone is an absolute bitch to convey properly over text, if you don't add indicators it's up to the reader to determine the tone you're using. Miscommunication causes larger problems. Using lol helps indicate a lighter tone so people don't think I'm pissed off or grumpy when I'm not
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I had to teach myself to say lol all the time via text and it absolutely helps with tone, so does using emoji which was something else I had to force myself to do. I seem less mature I guess but I don’t come off as a blunt asshole anymore and my conversations go a lot smoother
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I know, right? haha
What I want... No. What I need is a browser extension that would change every "lol" on every page into a small picture of a TIE Fighter. It would make that flyby noise if you put your mouse over it and you could blow it up by clicking.
Someone who's good at computer, please make! I'm going to assume it wouldn't be that hard.
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It masks all the sadness in my heart, lol.
I'm sorry for your loss, move on, lol
Lots of love?
Lol, no.
Also this is millennial thing, not GenX. I don't know anyone from that generation that would use lol.
Also this is millennial thing, not GenX.
Did someone say GenX? Or am I misreading your comment here?
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Now it’s “💀”
Actually, it's "😭" now
I keep seeing zoomers use this and it keeps confusing the shit out of me, because half the time, it just looks like crying, not laughing-crying.
Maybe they're just bad at it and using the wrong emoji half the time? idfk
Yeah the crying laughing emoji is 😂 why tf are they using the actual crying emoji
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The lol has contextual meaning though. Sometimes it means "you fucking idiot" and sometimes it means "thats funny" and sometimes it means "i dont care" etc.
Lmao, even
You can pry my lol from my cold dead fingers lol
Elder (and just old) millennial here. I remember "lol" became a thing because cell phones became a common thing. Specifically, the old flip phones.
Texting on them was a pain. Imagine having to type words with only a number pad. And you only had a tiny digital screen that could only fit a few words on it. On top of that, we were sometimes charged by the character. Or sometimes by the word. Depended on your service.
Everyone was looking for the shortest way to type words and get their message across. So shortcuts like "lol," "ily," "wdym," etc. became common use. As well as a variety of text emojis like :) :D :P or the fancy Japanese ones: (^_^) (-_-;;) etc.
As someone who spent their childhood with their nose buried in books, it bothered me to see this shorthand English everywhere. It just felt lazy to me. To this day, I've never typed "lol" unless I'm talking about the acronym itself.
I'd say they were already very common in online chatrooms long before cellphones were widely adopted. They just translated really well to the poor typing options, character limits, and per-message billing of the time so became more widely adopted (and some new shorthand created).
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Thank you for explaining this, lol
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I have a tendency to speak very blunt and directly about most things, so lol is absolute necessity for me online in order to not blatantly spread ragebait everywhere I go lol
Don't wanna, lmao
it's like "over" on a radio lol
There's no comma there. They use it as punctuation at the end of a sentence:
e.g.: "I heard your mother died I'm sorry lol"
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Lol, fuck this
Lol, no