Laughing in text is hard. You want to convey that you are amused – or pretend you are – but unlike laughing IRL, you have to actively choose how you sound.
Choose incorrectly, and you’ll sound way too sarcastic, or desperate, or old as hell.
Here is a non-exhaustive but helpful guide to picking your laugh.
Ha
This sounds like you’re being roasted in the group chat and someone brought up your recent breakup in a really mean way.
Haha
This isn’t really a laugh – it’s more of an acknowledgement. Or a dismissal.
lol
Similarly, this is about as expressive as a full stop. Nobody has typed this with so much as a smirk on their face since 2005.
LOL
Calm down, mum.
ROFLMAO
Calm down, grandma.
lolz
Calm down, middle-aged stranger dressed in suspiciously plain clothes, and no, I don’t know where I can get you some marijuana cigarettes.
lel
Ha ha ha
This looks absolutely psychotic.
Ahahahaha
Genuine, but looks weirdly sarcastic. Anything in front of the H makes it seem kind of schadenfreude-y, as well.
Apparently random collection of letters
This is the most genuine kind of online laughter, but you can’t actually just keyboard mash – you have to get the right aesthetic. “fgeuiwafguewilaf” doesn’t convey laughter, it looks like a Welsh breakfast food.
types of keyboard smash:
1. the wheeze/crackling laugh
SKSJSKSKKDKSKSKSLSKS2. screaming/gasping/shocked
XKCJDKDNFNF3. regular laughing
HDJHDJDJDJD— chanelle ? (@cyphervv) February 9, 2018
Hehe
“I’m so tired.”
Hehe ?
This is f**kboi for “please let me see you naked”. Never, ever do this.