Topic: LOL on this forum

[Les]

One of the great comedy wordsmiths, Ronnie Barker once wrote a sketch that went along the lines of

F U N E X?

(Have you any eggs?)

This ain't exactly new speak.

Remember it well Stephen ;D
And your right, It ain't nothing new, In Somerset we greet someone with "Ow bis thee"  Ow bad english be that

Les

[parker21]

omg lmfao whilst rofl then lel! iukwim  lifes 2 short, live n let live! peace n curry dudes

[Peripatetic Phil]

I am inclined to think of "LOL" as analogous to smoking : mindlessly adopted by those who are more influenced by peer pressure than by their own inate intelligence.

Mmm, bit harsh I think Phil?  I have used 'lol' on many occasions on this forum but not because I lack intelligence or feel under pressure to 'conform' to an expected style of chat!

Perhaps it came across as harsh, but it was not intended to : rather, it was an honest analysis of my own feelings regarding the use of "LOL", at least when it is clear from the context that the author is most certainly /not/ "laughing out loud", but is, rather, mildly amused at something he has read or written.  I confess that there have been times when I have responded "ROTFL" to a message (not many, but more than one), and yes, I wasn't actually "rolling on the floor laughing", but I /was/ very very very amused by what I had just read, and "ROTFL" seemed to sum it up nicely.  As to any lack of intelligence, I had quite deliberately written about the LOL users' "inate intelligence" rather than the lack thereof, which I had hoped would make it clear that I did not think them unintelligent...

I think some of us older generation need to progress from the past, and into the present [...] It's a new world out there, embrace it

No thank you, Les, I really have no wish to.  "Wanna", "gonna", "I could of", "m8" and their ilk do not represent progress; they are simply manifestations of a deliberate disregard for correctness in writing, and our society is in no way enriched by their adoption by the illiterati.

In Somerset we greet someone with "Ow bis thee"  Ow bad english be that ?

It b'aint "bad English" at all; it is a perfectly acceptable production in the Somerset dialect, and no modern descriptive grammarian would dream of criticising its use in speech (so long as the speaker was from that part of the world, that is).  But dialect is one thing; a flagrant and deliberate disregard for the accepted rules of written English is something completely different.  In my humble opinion, of course.

** Phil.

[Ian S.]

Internet Speak Explained

[Tommy Timebomb]

I'm not brave enough to put my foot in it Ian so I'll just go for ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D

[Graeme]

Now i found that very funny 

[colin grigson]

Great post Ian .. PML   

[chef888]

very very funny vid ian m8 wtg lol ( ivan )

[Ian S.]

I love Mike Booth's 'Somegreybloke' animations on YouTube. It's worth checking out his channel if you fancy a giggle. He used to post a new film every other week but he's slowed down over the past year or so.

This was one of the first Somegreybloke cartoons I saw, and this thread just reminded me of it.

Some of my younger friends use 'LOL' almost as punctuation. I get Facebook updates like: "went out last night lol had to get up early this mornin lmao 10 mins late for work lol".

I can't find it in myself to get annoyed by it. I was reading Stephen Fry's Twitter feed a while ago, and somebody asked him how he felt about abbreviations and text speak. I expected to see a discourse on the deterioration and evolution of language, but he just replied: "Anything is better than prissiness".

For the record, I tend to use 'Haha' rather than 'LOL'. Or I'll use one of these:   ;D