whatever happened to ROFL

Why did LOL and LMAO survive slang evolution while ROFL died out?

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I don’t remember the first time I saw ROFL. It must have been somewhere around 2014, and it was definitely on Tumblr. It was probably right after I discovered LMAO. I preferred ROFL, though. LMAO was a little too dramatic. I have never laughed my ass off, you know. But I had, on multiple occasions, mildly rolled on the floor laughing.

A quick look back at my now-archived Tumblr profile reveals that I was a serial ROFL-er until early 2017 (if you don’t already know, this was when I was sent to a boarding school away from my devices). Somehow, when I got back to my screens mid-2019, I wasn’t ROFL-ing anymore. I had started LOL-ing and LMAO-ing. (So basic, I know!) I didn’t know why, and I didn’t care how, until mid-2024, when the kids on Musk’s app started IJBOL-ing. As they were “just bursting out laughing,” I was reminded of my “rolling on the floor” days.

This (extremely delayed) issue of girl online is a deep dive into the evolution of texting slang. What happened to ROFL? How did LMAO become the norm? Is IJBOL here to stay? And more importantly, what does LOL even mean anymore?

The unverified origin story of ROFL dates back to 1989. It happened on Usenet when a user named Chuq used the acronym to laugh at another user when the latter did not comprehend another acronym, RTFM (Read The Fucking Manual).

Later, in the summer of 1992, the term evolved to ROFLOL (Rolling On the Floor Laughing Out Loud). Then it became this famous meme you must have seen around, the hallowed ROFLCOPTER:

After the ROFLCOPTER took off, for many years until the late 2010s, ROFL ruled internet forum conversations. Then, sometime around 2018, the ROFLCOPTER went out of commission. Why?

Multiple ex-ROFlers I spoke to told me that it was simply because ROFL was more difficult to spell out on the QWERTY keyboard compared to LOL and LMAO. Interesting hypothesis, but was that all? I don’t think so. The decline of ROFL is tied to the widespread adoption of internet speak in everyday language.

Before the mid-2000s, internet speak was largely confined to online forums and other forms of written, virtual communication. But as social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter became popular and the world slowly started becoming chronically online, the gap between internet vernacular and spoken language closed in. We started saying acronyms like LOL, LMAO, BRB, and OMG out loud. That’s when our protagonist, ROFL, became inconvenient.

ROFL didn’t roll off one’s tongue as easily as LOL or LMAO. So we didn’t say it out loud as much. This infrequency of ROFL’s usage in everyday vernacular led to it being less important in our personal vocabularies. Eventually, we stopped even typing out ROFL, rendering this once-beloved slang obsolete.

ROFL is also quite excessive. I can laugh out loud at your joke while typing “LOL.” I simply cannot roll over the floor laughing while typing “ROFL.” While this might sound silly, the relatability of a slang is a major factor that contributes to its evergreenness. And that is why LMAO has stood the test of time.

“Laughing my ass off” is a phrase that has been prevalent in informal communication way before internet speak existed. So it could seamlessly be integrated into everyday vernacular, unlike ROFL.

Grant Barrett, linguist, lexicographer, and cohost of the US radio program A Way with Words, explains another factor that might have led to ROFL losing its significance: “Slang is often tied to specific groups, particularly younger generations, who use language innovation to distinguish themselves. If a term becomes strongly associated with an older group, newer generations might abandon it.”

This means that the Gen Z kids who logged on to the internet somewhere in the 2010s (like yours truly) started associating ROFL with the millennials and didn’t want the slang to be tied to their metadata. Barrett further explains that all slang words are under the threat of losing their relevance if they can’t evolve beyond the initial use cases and become versatile, like LOL.

LOL has been since before ROFL and LMAO. It was coined in the early 1980s by a Canadian, Wayne Pearson. But it doesn’t literally mean “laugh out loud” anymore. Sometimes, LOL is mild amusement. Or maybe just an acknowledgement. At times, LOL is used to soften the blow. Other times, it is passive-aggressive. LOL’s successful evolution into a versatile discourse marker is why it is still the sweetheart of internetspeak.

Now, let’s come to IJBOL. Contrary to popular belief, IJBOL isn’t a new term. It’s been around since the early 2010s, but never caught on until recently (for a brief period). But it is this resurfacing of IJBOL that is interesting to me. Why did it come back suddenly? Why now? And why did it not stick around?

When LOL and LMAO became less expressive forms of laughter, IJBOL was readopted to fill the gap for an acronym that conveyed a more expressive form of laughter. And it didn’t last long, because we didn’t need an expressive form of laughter.

As I mentioned earlier, internet speak doesn’t evolve in isolation from real life. LOL and LMAO didn’t become mild forms of expression because we collectively decided to change their meaning. It became so because our forms of expression changed.

Post the pandemic, the collective happiness of the world has considerably decreased, and is continuing to decrease with every passing year. As we are scrolling through snippets of babies crying for food during war amidst fake podcasts from“alpha men” on how important it is to stay away from seed oils and how your belt placement is making you look “new money,” we are not bursting out laughing anymore. We don’t have the time and energy to IJBOL after grinding and hustling 70 hours a week just to live paycheck to paycheck. And if we aren’t IJBOL-ing IRL, we aren’t IJBOL-ing online.

So, until the world heals a little and we start laughing in real life, IJBOL cannot establish its place in the internet slang hall of fame and will die out just like ROFL. Till then, we will all probably just LOL (in mild amusement or sarcasm) through life.