And it also symbolizes the disconnect between the online persona on facebook, posting all those cool photos, and the real-world person sitting by the computer all those lonely nights. The emotions and the fulfillment of the emotions have become stilted, computers now provide a superstimulus (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernormal_stimulus) that replaces deep, real-life conversations with a steady stream shallow online interactions. Notifications pull us back in for more like an addictive slot machine. And our kids are ill-equipped to fight it, which is why they spend a great deal of their lives addicted to effectively meaningless communication with people who are not next to them:

http://www.buzzfeed.com/benrosen/how-to-snapchat-like-the-te...

In the late 1980s terms like LOL were used on BBSes and on Usenet. Perhaps you just aren't old enough to remember that? :-)

Before LOL I'd use hahaha or hehehe all the time as well in IRC, Chat Rooms, BBSes, etc.

  * Tiksi slaps bdreadz around a bit with a large trout.

It's the literal sound of a chuckle/giggle/light laughter. So when you say it aloud, you need only laugh naturally.

To see it in action go to http://nicovideo.jp and pick pretty much any video. Start watching with comments on, they scroll over the video, and marvel at the trails of www(wwwwwwwwwww).

Because, like, what do you do when someone puts effort into a joke and you want to give them positive reinforcement, but you're just not in a laughing mood? Or it was funny in the abstract, but you're the wrong audience?

Another approach I've seen was "Heh, that's funny." ... but I'm not sure if that's better or worse than "lol"

The current use of "lol" and "lmao" just makes a whole lot more sense than their hijacked and literal definition... it's about replacing what would normally be subtle visual cues and gestures, which signal acknowledgement and/or encouragement, with something that is universally understood.

The emoji thing was a bad analogy and I should have just left out that clause entirely and started that sentence some other way.

If anything, see Japanese - Kanji are essentially ancient Chinese emoticons, which succinctly express common notions which would be far more expansive in katakana or hiragana.

I can't read the latter, but I can read Kanji - which gets me by in both China and Japan.

Emoticons are even more universal.

It's a Germanic language (not a child of German), with significant lexical input from French and Latin. The input from "Dutch, Arabic, etc." is minor.

As for the development of the English language, I believe it derives mostly from Saxon - Frisian - Norse - French, in chronological order. I'm pretty sure Celtic should also be on that list, but I don't know in what order or to what extent.

That's not what I said. I said "it's Germanic" and "it's not a child of German or Dutch".

but perhaps they are here to stay.

second there was a massive gap in my friend group between MSN emoticons dieing out and emojis seeping in.

Perhaps my experiences are abnormal....

Some people write long messages to convey emotion. Others use ambiguous phrases and follow it up with a quick expression of emotion to set the context.