It can be likened to a rebus, which uses pictures and single letters, or numbers to represent whole words (e.g, "i <3 u" means “I love you”, b4 means before, lol means laugh out loud, etc. ).

这种短信文是由图片、字母或数字的组合来代表某个单词的，感觉像字谜一样。 比如："i <3 u"就代表“我爱你”（中间的<3像是一颗心的形状，代表“爱”），b4就是before（以前）这个单词的缩写形式，而lol则是laugh out loud（大声笑出来）这三个单词的缩写。

youdao

For example, if I had my bike stolen, my friend might reply 'LOL'. It helps overcome an awkward moment.

例如，我的自行车被偷了，我的朋友可能回复我LOL，它有助于克服一个尴尬的时刻。

youdao

Meaning gift of diamond: keep this because I will marry you, but if we are broke I will take it back, lol.

钻石怎么样?钻石的意义：保留这份礼物，因为我要嫁给你，但如果我们破产了我就要把它收回，哈哈。

youdao

Even though, he said, there were no guarantees that anyone applying to reserve a domain name, such as cats.lol, would get it.

BBC: New domain name endings set to shake up the net

"LINDSAY LOHAN IS NOT PREGNANT IS SHE NO STOP REALLY HAHAHAHHA SHUT UP OMG WHAT LOL HAHAHAHHAHAHAH CAN'T CONTROL IT HAHAHAHAHHA WHAT LOVE IT, " wrote Dominic Riccitello.

CNN: 'April Fools,' Lohan says of pregnancy tweet

When the worm infects a computer it sends out the "lol" message to the user's contact list.

BBC: Skype targeted by 'worm' malware infecting Windows PCs