Typing Laughter
Ezra Klein comments on the act of typing “hahahahaha” when IMing:
The artificial nature of electronic writing — where tone can’t soften and facial expressions can’t contextualize — actually requires a lot of validating communication. Typing out laughter, weird as it seems, doesn’t suggest a joke is funny so much as it acknowledges that the other person just made a joke, and you recognized it for what it was.
This is true, but it seems as though at least in my circle of friends we have developed a way of implicitly communicating whether we are engaging in the sort of validating “I recognize that was a joke” sort of laughter or we actually thought the joke was quite funny. Namely, a mere validation would be “haha” or perhaps “hahaha,” whereas if the joke actually provoked genuine laughter it would be “hahahahaha” or “HAHAHA” or, occasionally, “I just actually lol-ed.” It’s really more of a spectrum, with variations based on the number of “ha”s, the use of all-caps, the presence or absence of exclamation points, etc. The use of emoticons may also play a role, but I haven’t hammered out the finer details yet or anything.
Comment by tet on 23 May 2008 at 1:31 pm:
Hierarchy:
:)
;)
ha
ha!
haha!!
lol
lol!!
omfg-lol!!!
rofl
roflomgifsm (rolling on the floor laughing, oh my god, I fucking scared Mitzi)
Tom
Comment by Augur on 23 May 2008 at 2:13 pm:
Mitzi is the attack cat, right?
Comment by tet on 23 May 2008 at 4:38 pm:
Yeah.
Tom
Comment by Segen on 23 May 2008 at 8:51 pm:
i actually really wish there was some protocol with text-language using colors.
for example, if i was sarcasting…i’d write it in hot pink.
if i was being serious…i’d write in teal.
then the reader could possibly understand the writer’s context a bit more through color variations. there would have to be conventions on the colors, of course…
…and gchat would have to allow me to choose a color other than black!
Comment by Ezra Klein = Moron on 24 May 2008 at 6:45 am:
I think this post should be deleted for being thoroughly devoid of any point or logic. Also, Ezra Klein is a hack and a moron who does not deserve his high station in life.
Comment by tet on 24 May 2008 at 3:51 pm:
I like that a lot, Segen. One of the big problems with chat (as I’m finding out again) is the lack of possible nuance.
Tom
Comment by JayBandit on 27 May 2008 at 4:51 am:
that is exactly why Gchat rocks. It doesn’t have all that stupid foofy crap that bogs down AIM. Sending just simply text takes up much less space than also sending text and background color information.
It’s a conversation, not a work of art.