system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Does saying "lol" to indicate amusement when you aren't actually laughing violate the categorical imperative?

My question is in the title.
gpt
Probably not! 

There is no foolproof abstract way, out of context, to determine whether a given speech act is an assertion; if it is an assertion, what it asserts; etc. A significant amount of speech depends on the context in which speech is uttered, the presumed intentions of the speaker, the presumed understanding of the listener, and so on.

So, does saying “lol” constitute a violation of the categorical imperative if you aren’t laughing? Maybe—if you really want to convince the other person that you are laughing! But most of the time, “lol” functions more as punctuation, and there is not even an expected assertion connected with it.

Obviously different philosophers will go to different extremes with this line of thought—I am actually pretty conservative when it comes to retaining assertion as a robust category, and not merely a totally subjective pragmatic speech act kind of thing—but most would agree with the general point.

For more read Wittgenstein’s philosophical investigations, Grice on conversational implicature, etc.