If you’re still LOLing, you have some catching up to do when it comes to your social media game.
According to a new US-wide study by Facebook, 51 per cent of us express our laughter and amusement with a simple “haha.” After this, most users use an emoji (33.7 per cent) and “hehe” (13.1 per cent).
The good, old-fashioned LOL accounted for just 1.9 per cent of usage.
Entitled The Not-So-Universal Language of Laughter, the study was conducted in response to an article published in New Yorker on the subject of “e-laughter.” Researchers collected data on the way users expressed amusement, and broke down the results by age, gender, and location.
Younger users and women were more likely to use an emoji, while “hehe” tended to be a go-to for men. Though “hehe” conjures an image of youth, users of “hehe” tended to be older. The same is the case for LOL.
Of course, there are longer variants of both “haha” and “hehe.” According to Facebook, the average number of letters making up e-laughter is four (haha, or hehe), but six letters are also common. One ambitious (and presumably obnoxious) user in the study, however, had written a 600-letter long hahahahahahahaha…
While “lol”, “lolz”, and “loll” all make appearances in the study, “rofl” (rolling on the floor laughing), “lmao”, (laughing my ass off) or “pmsl” (pissing myself laughing) are absent. The study found that it’s increasingly common to opt for the reaction gif (the more ridiculous, the better, as far as we’re concerned).
It turns out, geographic location also influences your e-laughter of choice. People in Chicago and New York prefer an emoji, while those in Seattle and San Francisco prefer hahas.
What about Canada? Tell us how you prefer to let someone know you’re laughing when you’re not with them…
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