The acronym LOL has changed since it emerged in the 1980s, possibly coined by a Canadian man named Wayne Pearson.

[3] She cites research from linguist Michelle McSweeney, who analyzed text messages and concluded that "lol" indicates a new layer of meaning.

[4] It allows plausible deniability, and McCulloch uses the example “you look good in red lol.”[4] Periods at the end of text messages feel passive-aggressive because they introduce formality into a typically informal context.

As early as 1976, the Jargon File contained computer slang including “feature,” “bug,” and “glitch.” In 1977, social terms entered the file including still-common abbreviations like “BTW” and “FYI.”[4] McCulloch suggests that elderly people use ellipsis because they were a space-saving thought separator appropriate for paper communication, where line breaks wasted space.

[4][5] "McCulloch is such a disarming writer — lucid, friendly, unequivocally excited about her subject — that I began to marvel at the flexibility of the online language she describes, with its numerous shades of subtlety," wrote Jennifer Szalai in The New York Times.