*lol* ist kein Wort, es ist nicht einmal die Abkürzung eines Wortes. Was *lol* und *hey* sein könnten, hat der amerikanische Linguist John McWhorter in einem sehr unterhaltsamen Video analysiert.
Our language, much like everything these days, has been hacked. Fuzzy, contentious, and complex ideas have been stripped of their subversive connotations and replaced by cleaner, shinier, and emptier alternatives; long-running debates about politics, rights, and freedoms have been recast in the seemingly natural language of economics, innovation, and efficiency.