Why Do Millennials Feel Compelled To Write 'Lol' After Everything?

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Brittany Wong lives in LA and covers love, sex and relationships for HuffPost.

“My default mode is to feel that what I have to say isn’t important, so 'lol' is also sort of a great eraser,” one millennial said.Nick Russell, a millennial from Memphis, Tennessee, tacks “lol” onto texts to sidestep potentially awkward or loaded conversation.

“'Lol' has been around for so long that its meaning evolved, like a Pokémon. And yet, it clearly belongs to the digital realm that some people still find confusing.”“My default mode is to feel that what I have to say isn’t important, so it’s also sort of a great eraser,” he said. “But I’ve transitioned to ‘haha’ instead of ‘lol’ because I read that ‘lol’ is millennial-coded.”

“We’re the exact right age to think of email as a proxy for physical mail and texting as a proxy for phone calls or in-person conversations,” he said. “We learned to text onwith texts that cost money and had character limits, so space was at a premium and we had to convey context as efficiently as possible.”, a linguistics lecturer at the University of California, Los Angeles, thinks “lol” is a true linguistic chameleon ― and used a truly millennial comparison to make her point.

Jordan Kurtz, also at CZ Therapy Group, looks at “lol” as a way to get some distance between yourself and any knotty emotional content. Vulnerability is scary, especially over text. Plus, millennials have grown up alongside social media, where criticism and judgment are rampant and the potential to be dragged is ever present.

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