If you've ever been in an online discussion with me before, you know that I try to refrain from using "lol". Why? A little history behind this term is needed:

LOL traces its roots back to Usenet. It has grown in such popularity that everyone from the biggest n00b that believes that the only sites on the Internet are Facebook and Google to the hacker that uses Google to find vulnerabilities in other websites knows this term. It usually means "laugh out loud" though some definition variants include "laughing out loud" and "lots of love" while acronym variants include "lolz", "ROFL", and "lawl".

To begin with if someone does say something funny while I'm online, never do I actually laugh; I might smile, grin, or (going to the extreme) chuckle. But I will never laugh. "lol" is way overrated.

This is not to say that I don't actually laugh; I just don't actually laugh at loud when talking to someone via Instant Messaging.