Sometimes I get so angry about how often people use their cell phones that I just feel like screaming to them, “Do you hear me now? … Bad!” Now, chances are you didn’t just laugh at this joke. And why would you? It was one of the least funny jokes ever told. I’ve heard more humorous quips coming from guinea pigs. But had I written my poor attempt at humor on AIM, you probably would have laughed out loud.
For whatever reason, we at Cornell do not want to talk to each other anymore. At least not in the traditional “I say something to you and you respond accordingly” sort of way. We seem to prefer to communicate like mere robots, holding perfunctory, knee-jerk conversations online with whomever, whenever, so long as it makes us feel as though we are part of the social human race. Allow me to give you a sample conversation that two Cornell students will hold online (and no, I swear I did not hack into your computer last night and steal this conversation from you haha):
iheartClay227: hey whats up
Sheepbaahbaah7343: nm u
iheartClay227: i havent done any work at all today lol hehe
Sheepbaahbaah7343: hehe
iheartClay227:hehe
Sheepbaahbaah7343: haha
iheartClay227: gg ttyl
Sheepbaahbaah7343: LATER
Of course, iheartClay227 and Sheepbaahbaah7343 are fictional conversationalists. But shame on them anyway, and shame on YOU. For as sure as death, taxes, and the daze Rant being written by Zach Jones, you have succumbed to the temptation that is laughing out loud. And by laughing out loud, I mean its polar opposite, not laughing out loud (aka lol). All lol, and its bosom buddies ROFLMAO and hehe and haha, have become is an acknowledgment that someone has made a joke. If someone writes anything resembling something with any semblance of humor, however unfunny it really is, the respondent will mendaciously write that they either have laughed out loud, report that their ass has consequently come off, and they are now rolling on the floor, or the onomatopoeia of laughter. Even more despicable are those IMers who write lol at the end of any of their own lines. Who, in life outside of AIM, really ever laughs out loud right after telling their own joke? Yet their “buddy” who they are writing to will no doubt reward them by writing lol himself, perhaps even feeling so charitable as to give the grand daddy of lol’s, the LOL. But in the end, all that both sides of this deplorable conversation have done is acknowledge that person A has told a joke. I’ve had more personal, relevant, and profound conversations with everyone’s favorite wise-cracking, artificially intelligent bot, Smarterchild (hey, we all get lonely sometimes).
I propose a new LOL of sorts to use whenever somebody says a lame joke or pseudo-joke: ROTINHELLIFUCKINGHATEYOU. I think this would get the job done. This would not only deny rewarding such a schmuck, it would express to your buddy how you feel about them always lying to you about not doing any homework, hehe-ing at this lie, and having 148 AIM buddies when they have never even spoken to 141 of them.
Archived article by Jared Wolfe