When we “laugh” online, there are many ways we can type it to convey it. For example some might prefer a simple “lol”, while others might go for a big bellowing laugh like “HAHAHA”, while there are some who might favor a slightly more demure “hehe”. At the end of the day it really depends on the person, or does it?
It would seem that according to recent stats posted by the Facebook research team (via WIRED), certain types of laughs are associated with certain groups of people. In their study on online laughter, they found that emojis used to convey laughter are used more by women than men. The “haha” laugh was also found to be the most popular way of conveying the emotion, and that more men than women prefer to use it.
The “hehe” laugh ranks pretty low surprisingly and once again it is found that more men use it than women, although marginally. Oddly enough “lol” does not appear to be as popular as many would think as it is found to be the lowest used way to communicate laughter. In case dividing it up by gender wasn’t enough, Facebook then broke it down by city.
The research team found that in Seattle, “haha” was the most popular way of laughing online. In Chicago however, emojis proved to be the dominating method, and “hehe” is actually more favored in San Francisco. Phoenix on the other hand was found to use “lol” more than the other cities involved. It’s an interesting survey but what say you? Which laugh do you tend to use more?
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