It’s like a way to pat someone on the back, just with a keyboard. Most understand this predicament, so they use laughing abbreviations like “lol” to communicate a sense of serenity. This “Key & Peele” sketch is a perfect illustration of how technology obstructs our ability to effectively ascertain another’s tone, motives, and thought processes. After a series of messages, the serious man angrily says, “You are f-cking priceless,” to which the other endearingly says, “You’re the one who’s f-cking priceless,” not comprehending the disconnect in meaning. While the friend who said “whatever” is sincerely being nonchalant and is just lazy, the more A-type friend takes this as a diss. It results in confusion and anger in one of them.Ī more uptight man messages his stoner friend who is playing video games, “I’ve been trying to reach out to you all day, are we on for tonight?” In response, the friend says, “Sorry dude, missed your texts, I assumed we’d meet at the bar, whatever, I don’t care.” Tech BarriersĬonsider this skit from the comedy series “Key & Peele” featuring Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele, which went off the air in 2015, depicting two men who completely misread the other’s motives over text. Technology drives the song-and-dance phenomenon. People are not only engaged in an incalculable bid to validate each other, as McWhorter describes, but they are also worried about sounding too sober, too disagreeable, too unhip. …A pragmatic particle, that’s what ‘lol’ has gradually become.” We linguists call things like that ‘pragmatic particles.’ Any spoken language that’s used by real people has them. “‘Lol’ is being used in a very particular way,” McWhorter said. It’s a conversation that would be mundane in-person, and an oddity should it not be. It is simply about how Julie’s email is slow and how Susan has a 10-page paper due for school. However, he points out how nothing is particularly comedic about the conversation. Susan and Julie use “lol” in each message. JK!!!” linguist and Columbia University professor John McWhorter discussed how people feel the need to swiftly ease relations with peers, often doing so through laughing abbreviations such as “lol.” McWhorter presented an example of two women, Susan and Julie, having a conversation. Speaking in a 2013 TED talk titled “Txtng is killing language. “Lol” has cemented itself as an engine of this, as peers look to appease each other endlessly, dishing out empathy points.
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