This is no laughing matter.
Gen Z has canceled the fan-favorite acronym LOL.
Instead, the slang-savvy generation has coined a more complicated term in lieu of laugh out loud: IJBOL.
For the uninitiated, that means “I just burst out laughing.”
Unlike the so-called strictly “Millennial” LMAO (“laugh my a-s off”), ROFL (“rolling on the floor laughing”) or LOL, IJBOL — pronounced “eej-bowl” — doesn’t quite have the same je ne sais quoi.
Yet, the widely-used acronyms part of internet culture for decades have been trashed by Gen Z-ers, much like the thumbs-up emoji, skinny jeans and blond hair.
“I don’t LMAO. It’s just not what I do,” 27-year-old Michael Messineo, a Melbourne-based content creator, told The New York Times.
“I associate LMAO with Millennial humor. But then I associate IJBOL with Gen Z humor, which is funnier.”
The novel acronym IJBOL first appeared in Urban Dictionary in more than a decade ago, according to The Times, but resurfaced in the K-pop community in recent years — and finally stuck.
Well, sort of.
“Today Show” hosts Hoda Kotb and Jenna Bush Hager admitted they “weren’t aware” of the new slang term, while haters on TikTok argued that it’s “too long,” “looks stupid” and “the letters just don’t go together.”
But naysayers of IJBOL might be SOL — the term appears to be gaining popularity online, with the hashtag soaring past 2 million views on TikTok.
“My friends, we’re all around the same age, like 18 to early 20s,” 20-year-old Sebastian Champagne, a Massachusetts college student, told The Times.
“So a lot of us were like, ‘This is going to be our word now!’”
Michelle McSweeney, a professor at the City University of New York Graduate Center, said IJBOL is a corporate-friendly alternative for other youthful slang that might not be as buttoned-up.
“You would totally use LOL with your boss. I will say that I have used LMAO with my boss, but like, that’s as far as I escalate,” McSweeney told The Times.
“That’s why we need to bring new terms into circulation, because you’re not going to write to your best friend the same thing they’re going to write to your boss.”
