For the past few weeks, I've tried a little experiment.

I do a lot of text chat on the Internet, both for work and for fun. A habit I've noticed among text chatting folks is the tendency to write "heh" in response to someone. Like this:

sam: i cant beleive my boss asked me to bring him coffee! 
sam: who does hethink i am, dolly parton in 9 to 5?
sam: i mean, get real
joe: heh

I have always been a heavy "heh" sort of person. It's nice in the sense that you can let someone know that you're paying attention with a quick bit of typing.

But lately, when I type it, it feels more and more like the ACK responses I used to see back in my Commodore 64 days during a xmodem transfer. "Got it, keep going." The main annoyance for me with typing "heh" is that it feels like one-way communication. The other person doesn't really know that I'm paying attention; I might just be typing "heh" repeatedly.

Thus, I've made an active effort to replace the use of "heh" with something more meaningful and communicative. My opinion of what's been said, a request for more information, taking a subject branch, etc.

I'm not being critical of my friends who type "heh". I just wanted to take a "heh" sabbatical and see what happened.

So far, the results are mixed. I'm more in tune with the conversations I've been having, since I can't just type "heh" to everything. I'm sharing more of my opinions, for better or worse. I don't know if anyone has noticed that I'm not typing "heh" anymore.

But sometimes, "heh" is the right thing to type. When someone says something funny, you want to indicate that you thought it was funny. It seems disingenuous to type "LOL" if you're not actually Laughing Out Loud. I hardly ever Laugh Out Loud at stuff I read while text chatting. And I can honestly say that I've never found myself "ROFLMAO" unless I'm playing with one of the dogs.

I'll probably go back to a limited use license of "heh" sometime soon, but it's been good to take a break. I think spending a little extra brain power is a good thing (if you have it to spare,) and more substantive communication is always worth shooting for.