LOL Used To Mean Something

Back in the old days of the internet, the acronym "LOL" meant something. It stands for "Laughed Out Loud", and was used to indicate that the person using it did, in fact, laugh out loud upon reading another person's message. If you posted a humorous message to a Usenet group, and someone responded with LOL, you had the satisfaction of picturing that person sitting in a busy computer lab reading your post, starting to laugh audibly, and suddenly receiving puzzled stares from the other people in the lab.

But those days are gone. These days, people throw LOL around at the end of their own sentences or posts, basically using it as a smiley. But unlike a smiley, it is not intended in a friendly way. It is usually meant to indicate derision or smug self-superiority. When it appears in such a context, I have trouble believing that the person did actually laugh. It's more akin to simply saying "Ha! I laugh at you!" Which, of course, isn't actual laughter.

Back in the old days, we also had ROFL, but even then I don't think it was meant to be taken as a literally true description of the person's reaction. Especially when accompanied by the suffix MAO.