Ways to Laugh Online That Are More Amusing Than LOL

We can laugh and chuckle, snort and snicker, and also crack up, cachinnate and crackle. We can express laughter in so many words, which is just the English language. Perhaps it is not surprising, then, that several languages and communities have indeed developed new ways to express their laughter or social media and text messages.

• LOL

LOL is indeed the traditional way to laugh online. LOL, an acronym for Laugh Out Loud or Lots Of Laughter, was invented during the dot com revolution of the 1980s. Its popularity gave birth to several unique offspring.

• Lulz and lel

Lulz is an informal pronunciation derived when the plural form of LOL is spelt informally. Lulz is – laughing at someone else. 

Lel, another unique offspring, is a playful variant of lol. It is commonly associated with trolls online. It first emerged on the famous imageboard website 4chan around the mid-2000s. The E is a casual substitute for O.

In the internet world, all grew darker, as some users started pairing it with Trollface – a meme used online by troublemakers, based on a character from rage comics. 

• Emoji

Emojis were discovered in the mid-2010s and took over the online world by storm. Especially the two hugely popular laughing emojis: Rolling on the floor laughing and Face with tears of joy.

Face with tears of joy is the most popular and the most commonly used emoji worldwide. It is often used to express various degrees of happiness and amusement. 

Rolling on the floor, laughing is used to express something that is even more hilarious. However, both are often used to laugh online. 

• ROFL and roflcopter

 The emoji Rolling on the floor laughing is, of course, inspired by the acronym – ROFL.

Sometimes pronounced in a way that it rhymes with ‘awful’. ROFL has been in use since 1989.

And then came the ultimate combo ROTFLOL – that’s LOL combined with ROFL. Like many expressions of laughter, combining the expression simply shows how much you are cracking up.

The craziness goes even higher with ‘roflcopter’. A classic blend of ROFL and helicopter. This term was coined by the moderators of the War of Warcraft 3 forum. The reference was the gyrocopter, a vehicle in that particular online game. 

Gamers typically use roflcopter if they find something hilarious. 

Many use ROFL, while few also use ROTF (just rolling on the floor), and some geniuses use ROTFL (it’s not a spelling mistake). They just do not forget “THE”.

• xD or XD

During the Stone Age of the internet, much before the invention of emojis, primitive humans used emoticons like xD or XD to express laughter.

They are supposed to resemble one’s facial expression, wherein X corresponds to the eyes that are scrunched closed, and D resembles the mouth that is wide open in laughter.

As emojis emerged and became more widespread and popular, XD has become more of a nostalgia. 

• Kek

Some expressions of laughter also attract controversy. Kek is similar in meaning to haha or lol, mainly used by gamers. It has its origins in the online game Starcraft. The game was not available in the Korean language. As a result, the Korean equivalent of haha or lol came to be written as Keke. And soon became a joke on gamers who couldn’t speak Korean.

Incidentally, Kek is also the name of an ancient deity in Egypt. They are represented as a humanoid figure with the head of a frog. Then in 2015, an unknown user posted some information online along with pictures of the diety. And users started comparing the deity to Pepe the Frog –  a cartoon character. Since the US Presidential Election of 2016, Pepe the frog has been used as a hate symbol by Donald Trump’s supporters. As a result, Keke, trump and Pepe have become linked. 

With alt-rights activists exploiting the term kek, it means inviting more controversy than laughter in the USA. 

• WWWWW

Wwwww (“pronounced as “wah-rah-wah-rah-wah…”) is the Japanese way of ha ha ha ha… in text messages and on the internet. “To laugh” is called “wara” in Japanese. Thus, wwwww is used to express laughter by the Japanese. As the technology evolved, the Japanese adopted the word kanji, which denotes laughter, equivalent to lol.  

Like lol lol… or ha ha ha… the Japanese string together Ws to enhance laughter. Like the classic, haha or lol, shortened w is also a great way to laugh or mock online.