Virtual Limbo – Nothing to L.O.L. About

One of my pet annoyances is the punctuational shorthand the Internet has thrust upon our consciousness. “:-)” is supposed to mean something – smile or whatever. Virtual limbo! We don’t even have to move a facial muscle to transmit a fake reaction to another virtual nonentity.

My least favorite is “L.O.L.” – which means “Laughing out loud.” OK, friend, if you’re able to laugh out loud and put that stupid reaction on e-mail at the same time, you do have an animal-like talent.

Let’s analyze this: I tell you a joke; you laugh or you don’t. I e-mail you a joke; you e-mail me back “L.O.L.” Thanks a lot. Should I believe you? Can that bit of nonsense remotely compete with a typed-out: “Hey, that was really funny!”?

All right, you Webheads, I’ll use your semi-language. Here’s the L.O.L. of the new century, from our inept friends at America Online. This one’s a real dilly.

In a pocket of the plastic sleeve holding the Sunday newspaper is one of those CD-ROMs America Online tosses around indiscriminately, like the Easter Bunny throwing his tokens in all directions. On the face is “As seen on TV,” a tribute to a competing medium.

What’s the heading? “250 HOURS FREE!”

Wow! Assuming you’re on the Web two hours a day, that’s 125 days, well over four months. Quel largesse!

Oh, yeah? Come on, you know AOL. On the back, in mice-type, is this ridiculous but unsurprising legend:

FREE TRIAL DETAILS: 250 HOUR FREE TRIAL MUST BE USED WITHIN ONE MONTH OF INITIAL SIGN-ON.

AOL, in your own lingo, L.O.L.

Let’s see: The average month has 30 days. That means to take full advantage of this wonderful offer I have to be online well over eight hours a day, seven days a week. No fair taking a day off. So how do we make it work?

Well, here’s one way: Up at six, a quick coffee-and-bagel minibreakfast and an hour at AOL. It’s a quarter of eight. Off to work, from nine to five. Home by six. A quick decaf-and-tofu minidinner so we can be back at the modem by seven. No, scratch that. Decaf might let us sleep. Make that a double espresso. Putting in our additional seven hours brings us to two a.m. Quick! To bed! We have to be up by six. No time to change clothes or bedding.

So at the end of our trial month, rumpled and filthy and probably having been fired for sleeping on the job, triumph! We got in our 250 hours.

And here’s where the ploy backfires, like having liter bottles of Coca-Cola come out of a vending machine: We’re glutted. It’s like those tough-love treatments for smoking that have people lighting up and inhaling until they never want to see another cigarette in their entire lives.

We laugh, whether out loud or online or in the fitful sleep we get after having spent most of our waking hours reading spam. Laughing is a reaction based on ridicule, not on analysis. Analysis becomes us better, because after all, we’re professionals who should have exhausted our laughter after America Online’s tortured acquisition of CompuServe resulted in all those impenetrable deals with computer manufacturers – apparent discounts in exchange for a three-year CompuServe imprisonment.

But wait! There’s more!

What the…? Here’s the same CD-ROM offering 250 hours free…from CompuServe. In fact, they saved money by having the exact legend in the exact typeface with the exact same wording.

Our analysis ordinarily would tell us to buy MindSpring stock, because MindSpring is a genuine competitor. Ah! Here’s the MindSpring CD-ROM. Uh…what’s that on the cover?

150 HOURS FREE!

SPECIAL OFFER 250 HOURS FREE!

Huh? They’re infected, too? Where’s their explanation of two side-by-side unexplained mismatched headlines? Nope, not here. And not here. Not anywhere. What is on the sleeve? Installation instructions for PCs and Macs …some totally nondescript promotional copy such as “Click and you’re there” and “Fast, reliable connections with 56K access in most areas” and “Award-winning service and technical support,” plus an early candidate for the Most Uninspired Key Advertising Line of the Year Award: “With MindSpring choosing an ISP is a decision you make only once.” That brilliant slogan suggests they got their award from the guy who draws Dilbert.

But nothing about 150 hours. Nothing about 250 hours. (Going once. Going twice. Can I hear “350 hours”?) It’s hit-and-run. They hit. We run.

They haven’t learned that the incentive to stick a CD-ROM into the guts of your computer should be on the package, not on the CD-ROM. The universe is full of semipros, and the Internet is their prophet.

Shakespeare had it right: “When sorrows come, they come not as single spies, but in battalions.” And the word to describe these promotions is sorry. Instead of L.O.L. it’s S.O.L. (an old army contraction for “Out of luck”).

So what would we do, if we were in command? Oh, we’d probably list a couple of sites to visit as our guest. We’d probably arrange with some portals or search engines or sites to offer visitors special deals to an extension set up for us. We’d probably pitch the dickens out of the benefit of visiting a hot spot on the CD-ROM, and make it worthwhile once our hard-won guest hit that spot. And we’d say so on the sleeve.

Or would we? After all, who says the Internet and the World Wide Web really exist? Probably a couple of lunatics like those two guys who claim they can get a machine full of passengers to fly through the air.