#tone

#tone

They just stop responding. They ghost you. They leave your deck unread. They click away from your site and never come back. That's what happens when tone breaks trust. It's silent. Instant. And it's nearly impossible to track. It doesn't matter how smart your product is, how big your ambition is, or how clean your UI looks-if the way you sound feels off, it introduces just enough doubt to lose someone.

"So if you use them in January," LaMantia recalls being told, "you better hope there's nothing to exclaim for the rest of the year." The rule stuck. LaMantia still thinks about that rigid quota today. "I use exclamation points all the time in texts and emails. If you don't, the message sounds more stern," he says. "But I can't remember the last time I used one in a business article."

Those three small letters have become the topic of a generational debate that has been dividing the internet in recent months. The conversation started earlier this year across X, Threads, and Reddit when one user suggested: "Millennials use "lol" like STOP at the end of a telegram lol." In the comments millennials quickly defended their favorite acronym. "What of it?" one wrote. "Hold steady lads," another added. "In a culture that has taken everything from you, never let them strip you of your lols."