LOL Stands for “Lucifer Our Lord” – Fiction!
Summary of eRumor:
A Facebook posts warns that “LOL” is short for “Lucifer our lord,” not “laughing out loud.”
The Truth:
LOL isn’t short for Lucifer our lord.
That claim first surfaced in 2012 when a Facebook page went up for the so-called “Lucifer Our Lord = LOL” community. Even though there was only one post on the page, the “Lucifer our lord” myth was spread by social media users who posted versions of it, like this one:
“LOL = LUCIFER OUR LORD.
YOLO= YOUTH OBEYING LUCIFER’S ORDERS.
SWAG = SATAN’S WISHES ARE GRANTED.
ROFL = RISE, OUR FATHER LUCIFER.
BRB = BEELZEBUB RULES BELOW.
WTF= WORSHIP THE FALLEN.”
LOL is short for “laughing out loud.” So many people use it in their text messages and tweets that it’s included in dictionaries like the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) and Merriam-Webster now, the Huffington Post reports:
“Online, “initialisms” as they call them, are faster to type (as in texts and tweets) and, crucially, ‘help to say more in media where there is a limit to a number of characters one may use in a single message.’
“But the rise of these all-caps acronyms has impacted the non-electronic world as well. Found ‘in print, and even in spoken use’ the OED notes ‘there often seems to be a bit more than simple abbreviation going on.’
“When you’re LOL-ing in real life, apparently your e-shorthand helps you connote that you are using an ‘informal, gossipy mode of expression’ or even going so far as to ‘parody the level of unreflective enthusiasm or overstatement that can sometimes appear in online discourse, while at the same time marking oneself as an ‘insider’ au fait with the forms of expression associated with the latest technology.’”
Surprisingly, the OED dug even deeper into the history of LOL and found that it was used to shorten “laughing out loud” as early as 1989. Before that, LOL was used to abbreviate “little old lady” in the 1960s. There’s no record of Satanists using the term.
The same goes for other texting shorthand. YOLO stands for “you only live once,” not “youth obeying Lucifer’s orders.” That eRumor surfaced in 2012 when a “Youth Obeying Lucifer’s Orders – YOLO” Facebook page went up. The page was made by a group of comedians who said their interest was, “Making you, the fans, laugh!” That means it shouldn’t be taken seriously.