We use a form of speech from before emojis (:

Millennials didn't have emojis at first. You realize that, right?

But consider:

Emojis have no soul, and will never see the light of Heaven

Text based emoticons, meanwhile :) :( :3 :o Are God's chosen tone indicator, animated with the breath of life

U ok? Did we upset you? You seem...tense.

I too am not sure how to interpret your message lol

Because you're not following social conventions

It's also up to you to learn to work with others, conversation is a cooperative game. If you don't give enough signs, people don't know the tone you are intending to give over text, because body language and verbal tone is missing. That's the purpose of the informal conventions

It's your problem to learn too

I'm a Xennial? Born in 1980 so last year of Gen X, first year of Millennials?

I learned back in the early '90s that "lol" made my lighthearted comments appear lighthearted, and not cynical.

Your comment triggered me to ask an LLM to create it, and it came up with something. I'm not going to test it though, so we'll never know if it works. I'd advise anyone not to try it. It gave links to an image and a sound file that gave a 404 error. LLM output:

Here’s a complete Firefox extension that replaces the text "lol" with a TIE Fighter image, plays a sound on hover, and changes the image on click.

🔧 Firefox Extension: “Lol to TIE Fighter”

1. Manifest File (manifest.json)

{
  "manifest_version": 2,
  "name": "Lol to TIE Fighter",
  "version": "1.0",
  "description": "Replaces 'lol' with a TIE Fighter image and plays sound on hover.",
  "permissions": [
    "activeScript",
    "scripting",
    "https://example.com/*"
  ],
  "content_scripts": [
    {
      "matches": ["<all_urls>"],
      "js": ["content.js"]
    }
  ],
  "background": {
    "scripts": ["background.js"]
  },
  "options_page": "options.html"
}

2. Content Script (content.js)

document.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded", function() {
  function replaceTextNodesWithImages() {
    const walker = document.createTreeWalker(document.body, NodeFilter.SHOW_TEXT, null, false);
    let node;
    while (node = walker.nextNode()) {
      if (node.textContent.includes("lol")) {
        const img = document.createElement("img");
        img.src = "https://example.com/tie-fighter.png"; // Replace with your image URL
        img.style.width = "20px";
        img.style.height = "20px";
        img.style.display = "inline-block";
        img.style.cursor = "pointer";

        // Sound on hover
        img.addEventListener("mouseover", () => playSound());

        // Blow up on click
        img.addEventListener("click", () => blowUp(img));

        node.replaceWith(img);
      }
    }
  }

  replaceTextNodesWithImages();
});

function playSound() {
  const audio = new Audio("https://example.com/sound.mp3"); // Replace with your sound URL
  audio.play();
}

function blowUp(img) {
  img.src = "https://example.com/blowup.png"; // Replace with a larger image or "none"
  img.style.width = "40px";
  img.style.height = "40px";
}

3. Image and Sound Requirements TIE Fighter Image: Replace the URL in content.js with a public domain image. Example: TIE Fighter Image from Wikipedia Sound Effect: Replace the URL with a .mp3 file hosted on your server. Example: Sound Effect from FreeSound.org 🛠️ How to Use Create the files: manifest.json content.js Load the extension in Firefox: Go to about:debugging in Firefox. Click Add Extension and select the folder with your files. Test on any website with “lol” text. ⚠️ Notes Image/Sound URLs: Replace the URLs with your own hosted or public domain assets. Performance: This script runs on every page, so consider optimizing for large sites. Security: Ensure the image and sound URLs are secure to avoid errors. This extension replaces “lol” with a TIE Fighter image, plays a sound on hover, and expands the image on click. Adjust the URLs to match your assets!

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.

KIROV REPORTING

KIROV REPORTING

KIROV REPORTING

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

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

I'm a millennial and I use lol way too often to start or end messages

Lots of love?

Before us millenials had our own take at inventing initialisms and proto emojis...

Beepers. Pagers.

A fair number of different kinds of 'codes' became at least somewhat widely used as shorthand for more semantically complex things, and they had even smaller character limits.

https://www.wikihow.com/Pager-Codes

Now I was like 5 when pagers were all the rage, so I have no personal experience with these, but this was arguably the gen x version of millenials who spent too much time on computers as children coming up with 'gtfo' and 'lmao' and 'rofl' and such.

Hold up.

I think that mobile phones became popular before chat rooms.
Chat rooms existed first, but I think that they were mostly just for nerds until the early to mid 2000s

lol STOP lmao STOP

ROFLcopter or Rolling on the floor laughing like a helicopter is when something is so funny that you fall out of your seat laughing and you start kicking yourself giddily around the floor in a circle like a helicopter rotor.

Yeah they did in response to a different comment elsewhere in t thus thread.

Actually, it's "😭" now

instructions unclear, lolwtfbbq