Lose the LOL on Facebook – Ha, Ha Now All the Rage

If you read my blog, you already know I often preach the value of laughter and humor. Many of my articles are dedicated to the value of having a sense of humor such as Humor an Important Key to Happiness and How to Bring More Humor and Joy to Your Life.

EmoticonThat’s why I try and include at least one silly cartoons or saying a week on my author’s Facebook page. Often, I caption them with a LOL.

So imagine my dismay when I discovered that I am once again pathetically behind the times and out of touch. As a Baby Boomer Grandma, I thought I was being hip, young, and cool, but, oh no. Once again, I am apparently tardy on trends.

RIP LOL, Facebook says.

The old-fashioned “ha, ha” is now the preferred e-laughter. Really? Ha, ha seems a little lame, lame to me. Evidently I’ve had my head in the sand and others don’t share my view. A recent survey by Facebook showed that the vast majority of people are “haha-ers” (51.4 percent), then emoji lovers (33.7 percent), then “hehe-ers” (12.7 percent) and finally, the “lol-ers” (1.9 percent).

I’m in the 1.9% bracket! I’m horrified!

“Young people and women prefer emoji whereas men prefer longer ‘hehes’,” the team said. Both men and women like “hahas” and emoji followed by “hehes” and “lols”. The team found that across all age groups (13 to 70), the most common laughs are still “haha”, “hahaha”, “hahahaha”, and only then followed by “hehe”.

So there’s the lowdown.

What do I take away from this survey?

The survey showed that we all could stand to laugh more on our Facebook pages. “Nearly 46 percent of the people posted only a single laugh during the week while 85 percent posted fewer than five laughs,” the team wrote on Facebook’s official research blog.

With that in mind, I plan to include more humor on my Facebook page. Will I caption my silly cartoons and photos with an out-of-date LOL or the now fashionable ha, ha or he, he? Or perhaps an acceptable emoji? You’ll just have to wait and see!

And let’s all keep in mind that while the initials LOL may be out of style, we should all laugh out loud more in real life with a hearty hahaha!

Image courtesy of farconville at FreeDigitalPhotos.net. 

juliegorges

Julie A. Gorges is the author of two young adult novels, Just Call Me Goody Two Shoes and Time to Cast Away and co-author of Residential Steel Design and Construction published by McGraw Hill. In addition, hundreds of her articles and short stories have been published in national and regional magazines, and she received three journalism awards from the Washington Newspaper Publishers Association while working as a newspaper reporter. Julie currently lives in southern California with her husband, Scott, and has two grown children and three grandchildren.

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8 Responses

  1. Cat Michaels says:

    Oh my, Julie. Imam right there with you! I love LOL. The times, they are a-changin’! Hee-hee, ha-ha, Ho-ho.

  2. Linda Ursin says:

    I try to post something funny at least once a week on my pages. The only reason I started using LOL on my profile last year was the comment from someone stating that it stood for Lucifer Our Lord, and I wanted to annoy her 🙂 (It’s a myth if course). On my pages I usually stick to the haha or hehe I’ve always used.

  3. Suzie Cheel says:

    What no more LOL!!!! You have inspired me I have to add more humour to my life I think, I love to laugh and now i am thinking of finding laughter to add in , thanks

  4. I’ll have to think about whether or not to share this little gem with my niece since she uses LOL all the time. Thinking about it, I can’t even remember the last time I used it but being the rebel that I am seeing that it’s “out” makes me want to use it just because. 🙂

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