I was thinking about old friends I haven't seen or heard from in a long time (for reasons that may become obvious if I ever get round to posting the extremely long friends-only entry that's been brewing awhile), and I thought about my friend Pete. He used to be a "baby shark diver" in Thailand, and I first met him when he was in the UK after the tourist season was over one year. Then he went to Germany to do a veterinary course and I've seen him sporadically since. That led me onto the topic of people who overuse the phrase "lol" (as Pete would always end his emails "LoL".). I wonder how many of the people who use "lol" as punctuation realise it's short for "laughing out loud"? Worse than LOL all over the place is "LOLOL" - what does that mean? "Laughing out loud out loud"?
"Laughing,
oh laughing
Out loud." ?
Back in my day, we had variants of "lol" for when something was amusing enough to warrant it. There was "rotfl" - "rolls on the floor laughing" and "fohcl" - "falls off his/her chair laughing". Back then,