I have spent way too much time in ironic internet communities and "lol" is still popular. Tone is mainly an issue of character development. The cool people will

I have spent way too much time in ironic internet communities and "lol" is still popular. Tone is mainly an issue of character development. The cool people will understand when you are being ironic based on knowing who you are. This is only possible in actual communities with a limited number of regulars where people pay attention to usernames, avatars, and individual posting styles. In places like Reddit or HN where you are effectively just another anonymous poster, that character development is sort of impossible, restricting your communication options to something generic and official. If there was any interest in changing this, allowing us to add an icon next to our posts would dramatically increase user recognizability on HN. On the SomethingAwful forums, only the lame (but very popular) boards such as "General Bullshit" require that you type with proper capitalization and punctuation, and will actually punish you if you use "lol". The relaxed and more communal boards typically type in all lowercase and acronyms are common. Yes there's a hint of irony in even using the acronyms but they are still not going anywhere.