For example, the wwwwwwww thing. It’s annoying and I don’t understand how it’s become(ing) so widespread. It doesn’t even work in any language outside of Japanese. ghostlightning rightly said that it was easier to type out than loooooool but something about it still feels off. It’s a step too far, in my opinion, replacing something that’s served well enough in the past for no reason. It’s the type of thing that happened with the 2chan emoticons, only not nearly as well applied. The various 2chan emoticons seemed more like upgrades of standard emoticons and so worked quite well
I like wwwwwww because, as ghost says, it’s easy as hell. Yet its connotation is very potent. While ‘lol’ and ‘wwwwwww’ basically denote the same thing (I forget where I read that “w” is just an abbreviated 笑), I use ‘wwwww’ to signify really sarcastic humor. At least for me, wwwwww is pretty much equivalent to saying “OMFGZ ROFLBBQSAUCE11!!! GUHROOGAMESH!!!JELFKJSLJRjairjoi#u%oqiurjf.” On the other hand, lol is more “formal”, signifying “hey, this is funny.”
wwwwwwwww is so useful precisely because it doesn’t “work” outside Japanese – that’s where its connotation comes from. Weeaboo using wwwwww is self-referential, laughing at and with themselves, but always directing humor towards whatever is they’re laughing at. Wtf omi-chin, I expected better of you.
[site note - this site appears helpful, not like I know if it's well-known or not.]