LOL wat?

What on earth does LOL mean?

It’s an abbreviation that is now even verbalised, despite its initial use of a textual way of purveying a sound.

Just to make sure we’re all starting from the same point here, lol is probably most commonly defined as laugh out loud, though I am somewhat impressed you managed to navigate to this corner of the web if you didn’t know that.

This little shortcut to show your amusement at something on the internet dates well back into the early 90s and 80s. As the internet is still, somehow, becoming more and more mainstream it took until 2011 for the Oxford dictionary to add lol. However much currency that is to you, I do not know. 

As I recall things, this neologism bubbled up in Usenet, perpetuated through the 90s via IRC, broadened out into practically all other IM networks, SMSs and micro blogging systems to date so you now can have the pleasure of reading ‘Lol’ in the newspaper!

Lolcats

This lovely conception popularised the usage of lol as a prefix and opened avenues for wider applications of the 'word'. You can now do things for the lolz, a way of saying you're doing it for laughs. It is from this usage derivation that I see most sense in its origins.

The way I understand lol is, whilst not vastly different from the rest of the internet, I’ve always seen it as a smirk, a smile in response or to describe your amusement at something. Not L.O.L.

I’m sure the Dutch would agree with me on this point (Note: I’m not Dutch) as the Dutch word lollig translates into English as ‘funny’. 

I learnt this tidbit of information when speaking with my friend Peter, who inexplicably sent me a photo of a shop front named Lollebroek (Funnypants). He must've taken the photo for the lols.

Lolz to Lulz

Back in 2011, an internet group named lulzsec rose in prominence in the public mind. Whilst bastardizations of lol already existed in the obvious form of lal, it did make a lot more people start using lulz for a particularly dark type of humour. This type of humour was often at the expense of someone else, deserving or otherwise.

So we have the ability to do things for the lolz, and now also the lulz.

Let’s have a word from our friends the Dutch again. Lul just happens to mean prick in Dutch. In my opinion, lul is therefore a very suitable word for this use. Lolz for harmless laughs, lulz for laughs which is usually at someone else’s expense.

Do the former and everyone thinks you're funny, the latter, and at least one person will think you're a prick.