iMessage verify your lol

Was it really that funny?

As someone born in 1994, I have millennial tendencies with a dash of Zoomer humor. It’s strange having one foot in both generations, but it’s also proven to be advantageous as I feel I have a relatively strong ability to empathize with and understand people more deeply entrenched in either generation (what a fancy way to say I relate to people older and younger than me).

Anyways, a textbook millennial trait is appending the letters “lol” to phrases that don’t need the additional qualification. We say lol to de-escalate and to hedge our conversations in case things might not go the way we want them to. Conflict-averse people are particularly prone to excessive “lol’ing.

It’s funny, people say lol all the time via text but I’d venture to guess the times where someone literally laughs out loud are rare. Even if something is funny, it’s likely to elicit a strong exhale through the nose rather than an audible laugh.

This got me thinking… what if messaging platforms (like iMessage) forced you to record yourself laughing out loud if you wanted to use the term “lol”. My gut says usage of those 3 letters would drop precipitously overnight. It’d make conversation more stoic, but also more representative of spoken word.

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