LOL seems to be everywhere. It's the title of a Miley Cyrus/Demi Moore straight-to-DVD movie. It crops up at the end of texts from your friends, when they want to say something harsh without any consequences. And then there are the people who say EL OH EL out loud instead of laughing. Based on all of this, one would think that LOL is the e-laugh of choice. But it's not even second runner-up!
Inspired by a New Yorker piece titled "HAHAHA vs. HEHEHE," Facebook decided to analyze how their users express laughter online in order to determine which e-laugh reigns supreme. Here's what they found:
1. Haha and its longer iterations (hahahahaha, for example) win hands down, followed by laughing emojis and hehe. LOL finishes in an embarrassing fourth place.
2. LOL seems like something the youths are responsible for. Turns out: not so much. The dashed lines in the graph below represent median age. LOL trends oldest out of the four e-laughs.
