I just can’t bring myself to type the letters “LOL” without feeling as though I’m cheating a friend out of something more clever. It’s also a little lazy to have that one arrow in our canned-email-response quiver that says, “I read what you sent, I laughed, and I need you to know about it, so here, look at these three letters and feel better about yourself.”

I’m wholeheartedly disenchanted with the trend — and if you couldn’t tell by the end of paragraph one, here’s an emoticon to prove it.

Do we honestly think our friends are that insecure that they desparately need to know you laughed at what they sent? And that there was a decibel level involved?

Come on. Are we not flesh, blood, soul, and maybe a few rat hairs from tainted hot dogs? Are we not capable of responses more human than acronyms like LOL and its many friends, and their evil cousins, the emoticons, can communicate? And honestly folks, everything can’t be that funny, or nostrils would have evolved as a more natural pathway for the expulsion of milk.

To move us toward a less acronymic, emoticonic world, I offer a simple, baby step approach to reclaiming our emotions. It’s an easy way to explore your true emotions while still using your own thought processes. Just be honest with yourself. Search deep inside, or on the surface if you’re in Hollywood, and simply type out your actual emotion and (now this is the tricky part) keep only the first letter of each word. For example:

1. oh grow up = OGU
2. you’ve got too much time on your hands = YGTMTOYH
3. i don’t find your emails very funny = IDFYeVF (note the lower case e for email — subjective)

At first, friends and colleagues will be confused, but they’ll catch on. Eventually we’ll all be back to our old honest selves, leaving the entire word for all to see. Raw, pure, electronic emotions. Oprah would be proud.