Why you should never write "lol" or any variation thereof and the real reason people do and why people make a point of being wrong

Wednesday 10/22/25

It's as if people are willfully wrong as some assertion of their freedom. Often I don't think they believe what they so strenuously insist they believe.

It's not an important topic, but take the game of Jeremy Swayman. Marchand returned to Boston last night, was given a gushy tribute, cried on the bench, then tallied two assists in the Panthers' 4-3 victory over the Bruins. Swayman had one of his standard 82% save nights. His GAA average for the season is now over 3.00. He'll have another bad year. He's right on the cusp of bad now, and I expect him to soon move solidly into negative territory.

And yet, you'll have many people saying it's all about the defense and little to do with Jeremy Swayman. The ironic thing is that many of these people won't even like Swayman, because he isn't likable. This isn't because they rise above their personal feelings in the pursuit of objectivity. Are you kidding me? Does anyone do that now? Is anyone even capable of it? It'll be because they know this is wrong, but saying what is contrary to the truth is this kind of "flex" as people now put it. This pouty flex. "I can say whatever I want however hard I want to say it no matter how wrong it is."

This is a trivial sports matter. Sports are not important, really, in and of themselves, though you wouldn't know it in our brain dead culture. Sports are also dangerous now in that they're this time-sucking distraction that keeps people from the real issues and from thinking. Time spent thinking. Go home, watch the game--or two--and there's the day killed off, get up and repeat. Then, on the weekend, watch a dozen hours of sports. Or more.

It's then like you never have to be in the world, save to go to work, do the unfulfilling job usually for corporate overlords until you're replaced by the AI that you're already using in the rest of your life to replace you in your own life without even knowing you're doing it, because, again, you'd have to not be brain dead for that not to be the case.

But this phenomenon--the childish, gleeful demonstration of being purposefully wrong as act of personal assertion--is in everything. Political discourse, moral discourse. Intellectual discourse. What else is every instance of someone bragging, "I'm not going to read all of that lol."

That people are so often how we've just discussed above is a big reason for Trump's success. Do you call it success? I should say, "What makes Trump successful," which is different than success. The latter speaks to the aims of the individual, whereas the former is general and not personalized. What made Mussolini successful--that is, allowed him to do what he wanted to do--is different than the idea of Mussolini's success, which is an oxymoron. "He was successful in X" doesn't automatically mean that you can also say "X was a success."

Here's what happens, though, with this kind of attitudinal flex: It becomes reflex. The person becomes someone who does it automatically, without thinking. They get the Dopamine hit, too, of bristling others, which means they're getting that in-the-moment attention. They have nothing else to live for, no purpose, because they are nothing. They are very small. They are very insecure. Where there is bluster, there is insecurity. The dog who barks very loud is often very different than the dog who understands he doesn't need to.

People become their attitudes. This is one of the timeless truths of humanity. They always have and they always will, until the human component is fully phased out by machines. Then they'll be their programming, which is already happening and is much further along than just about anyone seems to know. Another irony is that people who think they're all about freedom and free will have actually thrown those freedoms and that free will over. Their responses, their reactions, their resulting thoughts--another oxymoron, because the phrase presupposes a natural "in following" reaction, rather than the overlaying of what's tantamount to official mental policy--are all in place ahead of time. Like marching orders.

That's not freedom. That's go along as hard as one can go along. But again, this speaks to why Donald Trump is successful. And it's no more a conservative thing than a leftist thing. I am simply using Trump's politics as one example. Look at publishing. Those people are almost all on the left. There are no appropriate, natural mental responses to anything, no individualism. And those people are even worse. Soon we'll do an entry on here, actually, with specific examples of publishing people who are a lot like Donald Trump, and which is very easy to illustrate.

You should never say "lol," by the way, because you can only be an idiot and come off like an idiot if you do. You can only be taken seriously, by people who are themselves not serious. You should grow up, and try and sound intelligent and aspire to be intelligent.

Another irony: People only say it because they have no confidence in themselves and their ability to communicate anything efficiently. They use it as a disclaimer for the stupid thing they've just said, this preemptive undercutting as if to say, "I didn't do my best here, I was just screwing around, so don't grade me like I was being serious"--and that's in terms of seriously trying to be funny, too.

They have this pathetic hope, as well--the pathetic hope of the person who just can't cut it for real and isn't capable of facing that. It's like someone who wants to be a writer and who sucks at writing. They write this story but "not seriously," and show it to their English teacher, and they say they didn't mean it seriously, it was just something they knocked out when they had some free time or on the bus or whatever.

They've covered their ass, you see? Given themselves a mattress for the soft fall. But down deep they really want the teacher to say, "Wow, this was amazing, you have real talent," and then they might say, "That was a story I'd been thinking about for years." This is how everyone is with everything now, just about. And it's why people write lol. You can be better than that. But one must also not be a pussy. Stick by your true intention and mean what you say.

It's not only what people say. They use it in a similar fashion for perceived reactions, for the same reasons. Rather than their expressed words on trial now, it's their conclusions, their taste, their thinking, their knowledge. So, again, it's all preemptively disclaimed, just in case, so you can't think they were being serious. God, come on, I'm not that stupid. Get it? Just in case. Because people are always trying to cover up. They're never confident in themselves.

Should they be? Why? You'd have no reason if this is how you go about things, how you think, act. This isn't solidity. This is paper thin, capable of being blown away with the lightest puff of wind.

Be smart, sound smart. Sound smart, be smart. Be things. Actually be them.