Among the oldest and most ubiquitous of the long list of internet slang today is LOL. The three letters used to abbreviate the expression that you’re laughing out loud. But the three letters have evolved, as language sometimes does, to be a meaningless response to something that someone else has said. You may not have even let out a chuckle, let alone a hearty laugh, when you type it. One Brian Moore has had enough of this three letter lie and made a LOL Verifier.
It’s as straightforward a name as they come. Plugged into your PC, the LOL Verifier will only let you type out the three letters if it detects an audible. And when it does, the three letters get accompanied by a green tick, alongside a verification timestamp. Otherwise, it replaces them with something else, and in the demo video shared on Twitter, the replacement is an equally dishonest “that’s funny”. Which is probably better than the misappropriation of internet lingo.
Moore explains that the LOL Verifier uses machine learning to identify laughs, the training of which include “recording over a hundred laughs”. Moore’s video also implies that he did the recording of more than a hundred laughs himself, which is probably the furthest thing from funny one can imagine.
As pointless an invention this is, the LOL Verifier is a vindictive desire for honesty made manifest. It may or may not be the creator’s intention, but I see this as taking a firm stand against the excessive evolution of language to the point of mutation. As someone who has seem people use the word “literally” to describe a metaphor, this device brings me a small amount of joy and hope into the bleakness that is social media.
I made this thing called LOL Verifier: a device that only lets you type lol if you’ve actually laughed out loud pic.twitter.com/Gsc63yGEm0
— Brian Moore (@lanewinfield) January 3, 2023
Moore also ends his Twitter video with a hint that a LMAO verifier is next. Which seems redundant as LMAO is just LOL but exaggerated by one order of magnitude.
(Source: Brian Moore / Twitter)
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