Pam on Big Brass Blog took a look at some of the Free Republic reactions to a story about public breastfeeding. It's pretty amazing. There needs to be a word for those times when you know damn well that some awful thing/idea is out there in the world, and yet you gawk with fascination when a specific example of that awful thing/idea is put in front of you. Intellectually, I know that somewhere in this wide nation of diverse opinions, there are people who are not merely discomfited by the sight of a woman breastfeeding in public, but are actively and vocally replused by it. But it's still jarring to see that faraway, abstract stupidity manifest itself onto my computer screen in a specific stupid string of stupid words:
"These arrogant, brazen displays have brought this outcry on themselves. The public is tired of seeing Mother's with babies hanging off of them everywhere. What? Is it some badge of courage, for a woman to nurse in public and then DARE someone to say something?"
Is there a vocabulary to describe the fact that I react just as strongly to this stuff as if I didn't know it was already out there? The knowledge that Freeper opinions like these represent a tiny, tiny minority of people doesn't quell it either.
Anyway. Further down, Pam MST3K's one of the Freeper comments thusly:
"Nursing a child in public is not the same thing as peeing in public and don't you think the gawkers will be more interested in the cheerleaders shaking their enhanced mammaries on field than some kid having lunch? [LOLOLOLOLOLOL]" (red emphasis in original. By which I mean, Pam's post, not the original Freeper comment she is commenting on.)
I've seen the online expression "LOLOLOL" to express lots of laughter before, but it never struck me how strange it is. Like, it seems that "LOL" has to go through some complex linguistic/semantic origami before it can become "LOLOLOL". I don't remember the jargon for most of these transformations, but in essence, it's a very strange way to play with an acronym.
Consider: "LOL" stands for something, but it's used so frequently that it no longer needs to be unpacked by readers; I read "LOL" and I no longer think of it as standing for "Laughing Out Loud". It's just this word that means laughter, just like the word "laughter" does. It has become a real word in the minds of the digitally literate (much like "ATM" or "VCR"). The story of Pinocchio comes to mind for reasons I can't quite articulate.
But then what must have happened (I think) is that even though no one ever says "LOL" aloud, they see the similarities in rhythm between the sound "ell-oh-ell" and the more traditional onomatopoeiac "ha-ha-ha". The term "LOL" is associated not just with the idea of laughter, but with the sound of laughter. So then it follows "logically" that if you want to express more laughter with "LOL", you add more syllables on just like you would if you were using "ha ha ha". That's my first guess, anyway.
My linguist colleagues remind me that the term for this is reduplication -- where a syllable is repeated for emphasis or to otherwise change the meaning of the word. Doesn't happen too much in English as far as I know, but it'd be like if I said, "my computer is the shiznit" and you said, "well my computer is the shiziznit."
So it seems like "LOL" braves the gauntlet of idiomatization, onomatopoeia and reduplication to become "LOLOLOL". When it's not idiomatized -- when the original meaning of the acronym remains intact -- that's when we get "ROFLMAO", which is derived from the unpacked words of "LOL" and not from "LOL" itself. I'm realizing it's also harder to type and is therefore maybe not long for this world.