I'll give you something to LOL about

[Title is spoken in a threatening tone]

So I thought I'd write a post about how a certain text/IM lingo is incredibly annoying and destroys all of your credibility in three letters. lol. I mean, I used to use this term when I was 13, lol, but it is so overused that you would express your jolly feelings better by typing "haha", or my favorite, "mwahaha." I feel like using lol either makes you sound like a jerk, or like you have not yet graduated from high school. LOL might as well be incorrectly used quotation marks, because they both have the same effect: making people believe you don't mean what you say.

Examples? But of course.

Incorrectly used quotation marks makes everything sound sketchy.

Come to a family BBQ and we will feed you "potato salad" and "beef" hot dogs.

I mean, heavens, what kind of slime is in "potato salad"? And I'm guessing it's not really beef.

Tagging lol onto everything makes it sound like I shouldn't believe anything that you say.

Come to a family BBQ lol and we will feed you potato salad and beef hot dogs lol

(I've noticed that people who use lol frequently forget terminal punctuation). Adding the two lols does not make the barbecue sound like more fun. It makes it sound like it's not really a family BBQ, or that you really won't be serving potato salad or hot dogs. More likely I'll show up and you'll give me a twig and some rocks and say "Here's your dinner, lol." Then I will slap you upside the face.

I realize that this post makes me sound like a grouchy, judgmental jerk, but I thought people need to be aware of how lol affects your credibility. If you know someone who would benefit from reading this post, but you don't want to offend them, you could e-mail them the link and say something like "Check out this anal-retentive chick who sounds like a total  %$#* lol."