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Feb. 21st, 2007
This was originally written to explain to someone why gaming/message board slang looks like someone sneezed on their keyboard:
Sometimes people on online forums and games make a spelling mistake. Sometimes that spelling mistake happens a lot. When it does, it's sometimes adopted as an amusing alternative. Many subcultures create their own versions of language - hence slang constantly changing. If you know the slang then you're clearly part of the group, if you don't then you
aren't.
In addition, lots of online forums and games have swearing protection, to stop people typing rude words to each other. It has therefore become commonplace to replace letters in any rude words with other letters, numbers or punctuation. This has then been extended to other words, purely because it recreates the above sensation of group identity and being "in".
Hence "l33t 5p34k" or "Elite speak" which can go even further, so that Elite -> leet -> l33t -> 1337.
Any letters not easily replaceable by numbers can be replaced by collections of punctuation like so: \/\/ 1 l< 1 P 3 [) 1 4 = Wikipedia.
There's also intentional ridiculous over-complication of words, so that "owned" becomes "ownzored", "winner" becomes "winzor", etc. And exclamation marks can be interspersed with 1s and even the word "one", for comic effect!!!111!!one!one!!
Wikipedia has a good page at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leet which gives the example:
“Bob rocks” is weaker than “Bob r0xx0rz” (note spelling), which is weaker than “Bob is t3h r0xx0rz” (note grammar), which is even weaker than "OMFG D00d Bob is t3h UBER 1337 R0XX0RZ LOL".
Sometimes people on online forums and games make a spelling mistake. Sometimes that spelling mistake happens a lot. When it does, it's sometimes adopted as an amusing alternative. Many subcultures create their own versions of language - hence slang constantly changing. If you know the slang then you're clearly part of the group, if you don't then you
aren't.
In addition, lots of online forums and games have swearing protection, to stop people typing rude words to each other. It has therefore become commonplace to replace letters in any rude words with other letters, numbers or punctuation. This has then been extended to other words, purely because it recreates the above sensation of group identity and being "in".
Hence "l33t 5p34k" or "Elite speak" which can go even further, so that Elite -> leet -> l33t -> 1337.
Any letters not easily replaceable by numbers can be replaced by collections of punctuation like so: \/\/ 1 l< 1 P 3 [) 1 4 = Wikipedia.
There's also intentional ridiculous over-complication of words, so that "owned" becomes "ownzored", "winner" becomes "winzor", etc. And exclamation marks can be interspersed with 1s and even the word "one", for comic effect!!!111!!one!one!!
Wikipedia has a good page at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leet which gives the example:
“Bob rocks” is weaker than “Bob r0xx0rz” (note spelling), which is weaker than “Bob is t3h r0xx0rz” (note grammar), which is even weaker than "OMFG D00d Bob is t3h UBER 1337 R0XX0RZ LOL".