The hahaha scale: Together we can defeat LOL

By Dan Morris

SAY someone tweets you, sends you a humorous text message or even writes an appealing status update, how do you respond? Please don’t tell me you write LOL.

It goes without saying that I am not the biggest fan of the phrase, in fact I despise it. Not only does it reminded me of the hours wasted, wallowing away on MSN messenger as an early teen but it’s clichéd, who actually means it when they use it?

Ok, so you are acknowledging that what you have read has humoured you in some way shape or form, but seriously are you laughing out loud – to yourself?

It’s overused and meaningless; I’ve witnessed people use it regarding the most serious of comments.

It lacks imagination and indicates a slender grasp on the English language.

Instead of writing LOL, I adopt what I like to call the hahaha scale.

Funny, sort of funny, not funny it has it covered: The hahaha scale

A scale which I will categorically predict you use, without even realising.

It’s a scale, albeit a trivial one, which is used to establish the necessary response to an interesting, entertaining, or downright hilarious instance – in fact it’s so versatile, it covers all eventualities.

The hahaha scale, concerns the necessary response to a particular occurrence, most will respond without even consulting the scale and hence its subconscious role within society.

It covers everything from a simple ha, to a full blown hahahahaha – each one has a meaning, you’ve just never given it the time of day.

There is without doubt a distinct difference between something that is actually funny, hahaha, and when you are just being sarcastic, ha.

For me LOL falls somewhere between, the actually funny marker and the mockingly funny, hahahahaha. It’s neither here nor there, no one quite knows what you mean and nor can they tell whether you’re being serious or not.

For these reasons alone it should never be used, despite the aforementioned.
Don’t get me wrong its cousins LMAO and ROTFL are far more nonsensical and none of which should be socially accepted – I defy anyone to actually, physically roll on the floor laughing, while continuing to type.

In a nutshell. Don’t use LOL, and next time you respond to a something with ha, check out the scale, I can assure you the comparisons will be uncanny.