Are you still “lol-ing” all over the place? According to Facebook’s new data on how people laugh via the site, lol is so over.
Facebook analyzed how its users expressed laughter (haha, hehe, lol and emoji) in posts and comments during the last week of May, and the results might surprise you. Of the 15 percent of users who expressed laughter that week, the social media site found that “the vast majority of people in our dataset are haha-ers (51.4%), then there are the emoji lovers (33.7%), the hehe-ers (12.7%), and finally, the lol-ers (1.9%).”
Facebook was inspired to take a look at this unique aspect of human behavior due to an article in the New Yorker about how we talk online and “e-laughter.” The article found that “laughter tended to vary by age and gender.”
See Facebook’s charts below, first on age, then gender:
Facebook also found that preferences varied by where you live. “Young people and women prefer emoji, whereas men prefer longer hehes. People in Chicago and New York prefer emoji, while Seattle and San Francisco prefer hahas.”
Now that the incredibly annoying lol is on its way out, I can’t wait for fomo to succumb to its long overdue death.
