worst. acronym. ever.

Recently, we've been seeing Geek Boy mindlessly playing video games more than ever before in his high school years. Today we're finally learning the cause.

lol

These three letters make up what is possibly the most common acronym found on the internet. They stand for "laughing out loud" and have evolved to become even part of everyday language for some, but at the very least they are an internet standard in expressing the act of laughing in response to something.

However, the LoL I'm talking about today is completely different. These three letters stand for "League of Legends." League of Legends is an online multiplayer game. Until about three weeks ago, I had never involved myself with online multiplayer games for a total of more than maybe 3 hours. Now, though, LoL has begun to shape my life and my culture.

I've become part of a community that's totally foreign to me, and now its culture has become part of my own. In school, I'm talking more with friends that play LoL. I've adopted terminology, knowledge, and thought patterns that are exclusive to LoL players. To be honest, it's almost scary how quickly I've assimilated into this culture, but there's nothing I can really do to change this now that LoL has become an integral part of my life.

Changes in one's culture due to a lifestyle shift can happen very fast or perhaps never at all. Degrees of assimilation depend on a variety of factors, such as one's original culture and one's willingness to accept other cultures. In my case, I think I very readily accepted LoL because I'm already a gamer.

My only issue with LoL is indeed that acronym. Everyone I know is too lazy to capitalize the L's, so it's sometimes quite ambiguous as to whether they are talking about LoL or if they are saying lol. There have been scenarios in which one person asks what the other wants to do and the other responds, "IDKLOL." Ordinarily, this would just mean, "I don't know lol," but in my case, it could be, "I don't know, LoL." Usually it's pretty clear, but other times...