This word was actually started by myself, and not SPH. It dates back to the days when the biggest ISPs were AOL, Prodigy and Excite. I used to type LoL with two upper-case Ls. In the process of capitalizing the Ls, I would
use the left shift key, since the 'L' key is on
the right side of the keyboard.
Unfortunately I had issues with hitting the 'z' key in conjunction with the shift key, or not hitting the shift key at all, so often it came out as lolz or lzolz. It had
nothing to do with a plural form of lol or for that matter laughing-out-loud zealously. If you want proof, go look up my nickname in a search engine, and see how far back my lolz references date back. AOL keeps logs of all publically help interviews with celebs, you will see an early use of lolz by myself in a few of them, one which dates back to 1995 (although I was using it before that time). The majority of the kids on this site weren't even out of diapers in 1995. I however am the biggest computer geek in a tri-state area, and I was 16 in 1995.