Those of us who bravely never succumbed to the temptation of integrating "lol" and related variants into our daily communications are now due for a celebration, as a victory by the far more appealing "haha" has been officially declared by Facebook. A new report from the Empire of Zuckerberg reveals that "haha" is the most common form of expressed laughter on the social platform, with "lol" experiencing a profound decline, specifically among younger FB frequenters.
According to the report, "haha" rests atop of a mountain of joyous victory with a usage rate of 51.4 percent. Meanwhile, laughter-related emoji accounts for an impressive 33.7 percent ahead of an oddly firm showing from "hehe" at 13.1 percent. As for the once mighty and now unceremoniously fallen "lol"? Well, the vile term's usage has plummeted to an abysmal 1.9 percent:
Though one's respective age demographic doesn't appear to play a gigantic role in the selection of expressed laughter, emoji are predictably most common in younger median age groups. Likewise, "haha" and related variants skew slightly older. For an entertainingly thorough and slightly melodramatic explanation of this, please consult the following block of text from Facebook's research team, then celebrate by sending a quick "haha" to everyone you love:
The most common are the four-letter hahas and hehes. The six-letter hahaha is also very common, and in general, the haha-ers use longer laughter. The haha-ers are also slightly more open than the hehe-ers to using odd number of letters, and we do see the occasional hahaas and hhhhaaahhhaas. The lol almost always stands by itself, though some rare specimens of lolz and loll were found. A single emoji is used 50 percent of the time, and it's quite rare to see people use more than five identical consecutive emoji.
R.I.P. LOL.
