When LOL Isn't Funny.

Dear Cybersorter,
A good friend of mine is really starting to annoy me. Whenever I text her with something or send her a tweet, she nearly always replies with one word: LOL.
For a start, she obviously isn’t laughing out loud (I know I’m funny but these tweets or texts are generally quite mundane). Why is she bothering to waste 5c on a pointless text? It’s patronising, dismissive and so irritating.
I’ve tried asking her: “What’s so funny?” but she just doesn’t reply. How do I get the LOLing to stop? – AF

Dear AF,
It is a bit rude to answer everything with just a LOL. It seems some people are becoming addicted to internet abbreviations and acronyms. For example, “OMG WTF is she wearing, LOL”, would not be an uncommon or unacceptable tweet during the latest episode of the X Factor.
This manner of crunching up our language first developed as a short-hand among friends and inevitably spread to become a handy part of internet subculture.
In your case, it’s being used to fob you off. The offhand nature of it is understandably annoying. Perhaps your friend just has a very busy and important life, too busy and important to respond in kind to you when you make the effort to try and connect with her.
I’m tempted to advise you to respond to the next LOL with a simple FO (Friendship Over) but that would be sinking to her level.
So I suggest you stop texting or tweeting her and wait and see what she does. At the very least, it will break the annoying LOL cycle.