Dear Zweibeiner,

You must be Brazilian. I find myself often bringing this up to Brazilians online (and usually to those whose command of English is very good otherwise):

“Kkk” does not mean in any English speaking country, and to my knowledge anywhere besides in Brazil (and perhaps in other Portuguese speaking countries?) anything even remotely close to the meaning of “laughter” that it has in internet lingo for Brazilians. But ever since I first learned of this meaning from a Brazilian online, I’ve seen the same mistake repeated over and over. So there must be something about it that maybe looks “universal” to Brazilians?

And in fact, “KKK” are the initials, and to an American at least, the instantly recognizable acronym for a violent hate group that at one point had significant political power in the United States. My point is not to highlight them, or to get banned or misunderstood here, so you can look this up online (i.e. Wikipedia). But my point here is to clarify these two things: -those letters *do not mean* and *are not recognizable* as laughter (a similar web term in English is “lol” for “laughing out loud”) and – those letters, at least when three of them are used, are *immediately* recognizable as what I explained. Which also means that “laughter” is the last thing an English speaker understands by them. What a strange phenomenon this mistake is, I find, especially seeing how common it is!

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