LOVE – 15 – 30 – 40 – What’s next? And why?

Maybe because the double zeros are reminiscent of breasts?   Or holes maybe?

It is the French Lol.

I googled:
 In French, l'oeuf means egg. It sounds like love. A 0 looks like an egg so they say love This post was edited by my2cents at October 30, 2016 11:31 AM MDT

Eh, it's all coming together.   I went with sexual connotations based on their lusty  and libertine culture.

Thank you 2cents. Interesting twist. I can't hear the French satiric imitation made by the British of a French person saying LOVE. Fantastic story. :-)

It's disputed but I think that probably has something to do with 'associations' too.  At a time when many would have had extremely limited levels of education, the concept of zero might be rather tricky to get across.  Hence it is proposed that the word l'ouef was used - 'egg', to represent zero.  Another possibility is that the word l'heure was used - 'hour' (and this fits nicely with the idea of the clock face as an early scoreboard).

Either way, once the English got their hands on the original word, accents happened followed inevitably by corruptions of the original.  Given that for many centuries certain strata of English society had a scandalised fascination with everything French, and that like most all-male gatherings inevitably found their view of the world defined by sex, we eventually get, 'love'.

I'm not sure it's that persuasive, but I'd go for the l'heure explanation if made to choose.

:-)