Just anecdotally, many people I know never really used "LOL" unless we were being sarcastic. It always reminded me of the early/mid 90's when "The Internet!" s

Just anecdotally, many people I know never really used "LOL" unless we were being sarcastic. It always reminded me of the early/mid 90's when "The Internet!" started getting a lot of press and there were articles all over the place (in print, natch) about how to talk in "internet speak". They'd list all of these abbreviations like "LOL" and "ROFL" among others that struck us, as likely dickish teenagers who considered ourselves savvy due to having used BBSes and IRS, like a signifier of "AOL-speak" used by the inexperienced noobs who learned about "The Internet!" from a magazine article. Probably an unfair assessment and not really flattering considering we had only been using this stuff since the mid/late 1980s at best, but such is the folly of youth ;) Still, I never really lost that association of "LOL" with the annoyance I felt back at age 17 or 18 when "AOL kiddies" started showing up on IRC and MUDs.