It'd be pretty interesting from a linguistics perspective to see how smileys and things like "lol" affect English as a whole over a long period of time. Although, this is maybe all too niche and transitory to have a lasting impact on our language.

Well, I know of a rather famous German linguist that works on precisely that topic - and the use of emoticons as a language on the Internet, so I am sure the man has colleagues in the Anglosphere.