Imagine waking up the next morning and the first news you hear about Athletic-Barça is the “HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA” at” Iñaki Williams’ tweeter was. The first thing I would think is that the Basques have put ten on him and that eight are theirs, and, if you are also a culé (of a low class for not seeing his team the night before), I would send everything to fry asparagus and blame, already not to the referee (poor you for doing it now), but to your love for colors that no longer add anything.
That, rheumy, you came to interpret that would be attributable to the Athletic player, not to you. For its 25 “JA” plus the last choking and gurgling “JAJ” the help of the context is invaluable. Thus the intonation is assumed to be ironic and simulated before the goal that was annulled. But, oblivious to the circumstances, they are more typical of an evil, malignant, perverse laugh.
It would be a laugh seen before to Cruella de Vil tormenting Dalmatians, to the leader of MAD while stroking his cat, to Predator when he is about to burst and schwarzeneggear entrails all over the tropical jungle, to player 212 of the Squid Game when the bad guy 101 realizes that she is not dead yet. Or the laugh that we imagine from Lineker when the BBC is forced to reinstate him, or from Sánchez when Iglesias leaves Moncloa. Or Junqueras when Junts leaves the Government. It is true, however, that none of them would be able to hold it as Williams writes, without taking a breath.
There are studies on how to write the laughs in WhatsApp. It’s not the same “ha” (he didn’t find it funny), “haha” (he didn’t understand the joke and he’s embarrassed to admit it) or “hahaha” (now he does, he laughs heartily). But if you want to be ironic, like the Athletic player, use spaces –ha ha–, and if you want to be more academic than Arturo Pérez-Reverte and show how he could be in a position to give zero likes in thirteen years on Twitter, use commas and spaces – ha ha ha ha – but it will be dull and you may lose friends.
However, Williams’s context is limited. Some tweeters reminded him of a play that was almost nailed: a goal disallowed for Celta against his team a fortnight earlier. He has reasons for the complaint: until Barça arrived, eight goals had been withdrawn from him. But where the context does not enter, there is a video library from which interviews of his would also be extracted where he shows more humor and a laugh much more successful than that of the social network. A guy who would even be able to laugh like Count Draco from Sesame Street: counting apples.
