HAHAHAHA? LOL?

See here for a perspicuously articulated inquiry into the efficacy of one of our most oft-used signifiers.

Here’s the thing about ‘lol’: What in the hell does that even mean? That I’m laughing out loud? Yeah, that really comes across when I’m reading it. “Hmph,” I think to myself, sounding out the words of your email, “my friend or co-worker wrote ‘lol’—he or she must be laughing really, REALLY hard right now. The intensity of this laughter is just LEAPING off the page. I get it! I really get it!! ‘Lol,’ man—‘lol’ forever!”

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Casey Dayan is a Rumpus intern and musician. He is finishing up his undergraduate studies in literature and anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz where he is working on a memoir and trying to one-up Jeff Buckley. Find his twitter here, @caseydayan. Find his band, “Moo,” here.

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The Rumpus publishes original fiction, poetry, literary humor writing, comics, essays, book reviews, and interviews with authors and artists of all kinds. Our mostly volunteer-run magazine strives to be a platform for risk-taking voices and writing that might not find a home elsewhere. We lift up new voices alongside those of more established writers our readers may already know and love. We want to bring new perspectives into the conversation that will make us all look deeper.

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