\o/ has, I think, been independently "invented" by at least three people I know. Personally, my moment of insight came after an extended IRC session led to the realisation that in Courier, lol looks like a little dude waving for help as he drowns. Possibly under a tsunami of insecure backslapping digital nonsense.

Anyway, \o/ seemed much more cheerful as well as being less ambiguous, so I started using that.

'A software'? Ah, I'm off on the wrong foot already.

I like the idea but in practice the occurrence of certain words - the essence of Bayesian analysis - says nothing about the value of what's being said. Most of the humour on bash.org is funny and insightful without using any objectively "intelligent" words and I've known many a manager who, with an arsenal of "word of the day" vocabulary, couldn't string a coherent concept together for love or money.

Tom Stoppard explores this in Arcadia - if you have a ball to hit, you can hit it with anything.. but if you don't have a point to make it doesn't matter how well you can't make it.

I'm amused by the assumption that "real AI" is smarter than Internet stupidity. As far as I was aware, nothing is foolproof because fools are so ingenious.

How long before an Onion article about a guy "disappointed to discover $200 hooker wasn't erudite, eloquent yet softly tragic intellectual"?