my train of thought as I tried to get to sleep

[baratron]

A couple of nights ago, I wrote a livejournal entry in my head whilst trying to get to sleep. Unlike most lj entries I write in this state, this one actually survived being carried around for a few days, due to its exceedingly high proportion of tenuous links.

I was thinking about old friends I haven't seen or heard from in a long time (for reasons that may become obvious if I ever get round to posting the extremely long friends-only entry that's been brewing awhile), and I thought about my friend Pete. He used to be a "baby shark diver" in Thailand, and I first met him when he was in the UK after the tourist season was over one year. Then he went to Germany to do a veterinary course and I've seen him sporadically since. That led me onto the topic of people who overuse the phrase "lol" (as Pete would always end his emails "LoL".). I wonder how many of the people who use "lol" as punctuation realise it's short for "laughing out loud"? Worse than LOL all over the place is "LOLOL" - what does that mean? "Laughing out loud out loud"?

"Laughing,
oh laughing
Out loud." ?

Back in my day, we had variants of "lol" for when something was amusing enough to warrant it. There was "rotfl" - "rolls on the floor laughing" and "fohcl" - "falls off his/her chair laughing". Back then, hatter used to use neuter gender all the time online. He wasn't making a big genderqueer statement or anything, it was just that it was amusing to deliberately refuse to give out gender information to idiots who were trolling for net.sex. Not many people had met him in real life, and those who had thought it was amusing to continue the joke. Also, at the time, he was using an account with username "buxmjp", which when fingered would give out a real name of "Mary Jane Petersen", and coincidentally looked rather like "buxom"! So he would always write "foicl" - "falls off its chair laughing".

hatter's gender neutral status was something of a joke amongst hardcore talker spods in 1995. However, later that year, it verged scarily into real life. He was accompanying narenek/Stuart to a function, and Stuart was spotted by one of his cow-orkers. Now, Stuart is straight, and Marcus is definitely male. But Stuart's cow-orker promptly congratulated him on "having pulled"! Somehow, when viewed from behind, Marcus's long hair was enough to confuse him. Oh dear.

Comments

[londonstatto.livejournal.com]

"Somehow, when viewed from behind, Marcus's long hair was enough to confuse him. Oh dear."

Sounds familiar... the time when I was doing shome shopping in Manchester with my mum and we were approached by some woman doing a survey, whose opening gambit was "hello, ladies". And this was with a front view.

[baratron.livejournal.com]

Ah, but you don't even have a beard! We've had people say "hello ladies" to me and Richard when we've been wandering round together... how many women do you know with thick goatees?

Kids

[hiddenpaw.livejournal.com]

I've never seen a mother turn so red as when her kid looked at me and said
"Mummy, Why's that woman go a beard"

One of my other favorite moments was actualy only relayed to me. I'd got up and wandered down stairs to get a cup of tea and discovered Clawz with a bunch of his workmates from a major gay website company. Aparently when I wandered back upstairs one of his co workers first comments was "I didn't know any of your housemates were gay!"*

*Incase you don't know me I'm not.

Laughter

[johnckirk.livejournal.com]

I know what you mean about the "lol" comment - I think that some people think it stands for "lots of laughs", hence "lolol"="lots of lots of laughs".

Personally, I think terms like "rotfl" are overused. I remember when I saw Harlan Ellison at a convention a few years ago, he gave an extremely funny speech. I was laughing so hard that my stomach actually hurt, and I kept sliding down off my chair, and having to push myself back up to stop falling off onto the floor. In a situation like that, the acronym makes sense, but the repetition diminishes it.

Nowadays, I tend to use:
/me laughs
on IRC instead (when literally true), which gets the point across.

Now <u>that</u> would explain it.

[baratron.livejournal.com]

I think that some people think it stands for "lots of laughs"

Oh! OK.

[narenek.livejournal.com]

IIRC that particular incident occured in my final year at uni (97/98), after showing Hatter out of my house, Alaric (then housemate) congratulated me on having pulled.

[sharkadder.livejournal.com]

The person who signs emails LoL OBVIOUSLY means 'lots of love'

duh