Here’s some sad news for everyone still unironically using LOL to denote that they’re laughing out loud at something hilarious. Like LMAO, ROFL, and the less popular but very festive LOLWTFBBQ, the original way to abbreviate your laughter is being replaced by the even shorter “ha” and “he.”
According to Quartz, Facebook has analyzed comments on posts that incited laughter and found that while around 50 percent of users used “haha” (with the number of “ha”s proportionate to the amount of laughter, less than five percent of people are using lol (which many of us love because the lowercase version looks like someone waving their hands in the air like they just don’t care) to communicate that they found a Minions meme hilarious. In fact, aside from “ha” and “he,” the younger generation is also relying on emoji to express their emotions. And yes, friends, younger generation is in there for a reason. Quartz reports that only olds use the outdated acronym for “laughing out loud” on the internet, suggesting that its use is relegated to those internet users who are in their 30s rather than their 20s.