It confuses the hell out of me! I understand why you would abbreviate when texting someone, or even when speaking via IM. But why the H311 do people use random numbers an otherwise? It does nothing but slow down the reading process and doesn't even abbreviate the word. I understand using it to get past the sensors when saying naughty words like: v@gina, $hit, a$$, p3ni5 and so on another HUGE question Why in the name of everything good and holy, do nearly all of you mis-spell "the" as teh or t3h On all the boards I have been on I have never seen such a proliferation of weird number, symbol, letter useage. please explain
t00 much c0nfu510n f0r y0ur t3h 1nt4rw3bz? th3n l3av3!!!!1111uno kidding...this lingo is here to stay FYI
I did a Google translation of "Retard" to "English" and this is what I got. too much confusion for your the internet? Then leave! ( a bunch of exclamation marks) That makes n0 f^ing sense. I haven't seen it on NASIOC, Porsche boards, Z boards, Saab boards, various other boards. This is all a first for me. And I am assuming a lot of this is some huge inside joke. I still don't know what the hell "the woot" is. Please explain. Most importantly! WHY DO YOU MISPELL "THE" I would love to see your resume, cover letters, professional work.
See that is what I thought when I first came here. I just figured people were tying too fast. Then I noticed it is done by nearly everyone and then sometime with the variation containing the number 3. Oh well!
heheh3h3. you are referring to 1337 5p34k. (leet speak). heres a quick intro to it. leet speak is a web language that developed around online gaming, hacking and other web intensive things. this language revolves around replacing letters with numbers. here is a quic list of the comon replacements. A=4 E=3 l=1 T=7 S=5 O=0 there are many more, some times you will even see people making leters out of symbols such as |< = K. anywho back to the b4s1cs. with these simple changes to the alphabet you can start to see what happening. to further pla on the language (which was probably founded by mispellings) some new words have been formed to express certain emotions. here is a quick glance at some of the new words and thier useages. pwn3d or pwned = being completely owned / rocked / destroyed. words coem from teh game warcraft where in a cut scene instead of saying owned it says PWNED, and it stuck. w00t = YAY, HAZAA, AWSOME, AMAZING!!!! this word is thought to have originated in online gaming by people saying Wow, Loot! then it got shortened to woot! change the o to 0s and your done. Haxor (h4x0r) = Hacker, and a very good one at that. Haxored = Been pwned by a haxor Roxored = rocked, pwned roxorz = this rules! (it is very common to replace s with z) these are that basics or the language. if you combine the words above in wierd ways, use lotsa numbers, and randomly uppercase letters people will not think you a n00b (newbie). hope this helped
Guess I was never in on Worlds of War Craft. I understand it for the most part. I just don't understand why? That's all. Thanks for t3h brief rundown Martin!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JeffK JeffK is a fictional character made up by Lowtax from Something Awful. Some of what you see comes from him, especially writing 'teh'.
here is more info then i thought possibly availabe on the subject http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leetspeak
THAT IS REMARKABLE. A true history of "leet" speak. I just realized....you guys are NERDS! (kidding) However, from Wikipedia, "and the widespread imitation of Jeff K. and parodying of the "leet" stereotype by the Internet at large has made the humor too overused; in Kyanka's own words, "the Internet has murdered him"
The funny thing is that by and large most people use that particular method of typing to make fun of script kiddies etc. are caricaturing only other people making fun of the same thing. most skript kiddies havent used it in years or werent old enough to use computers when people did more commonly use script kiddie scrawl, are thereby really not making fun of anything anymore except other people making fun of the same dead culture. It's like hosting a talk show where everyone disses disco and parachute pants while dressed like MC hammer getting down to Staying Alive.
This is so awesome. T3h woot, if you will A trajectory through social acceptance on the Internet could be seen as: 1. The "newbie" stage, wherein a user is ignorant about languages and customs. 2. A "Leet" stage, where a user may over-compensate in their actions, by using Leet excessively, so as to "fit in" with the "elite" social cadre. These users may also attempt to ostracize other users who have not progressed to such a stage. 3. A more "orthodox" stage, in which attention is paid to grammar and spelling. Communities seeking credibility in the eyes of the rest of the Internet may seek to portray this level of maturity. It is at this stage when Leet is most used in a sarcastic tone. So I guess I am a 1, a loser n00b MNsubaru is at stage 2. And all of my more elite and sophisticated boards are at a 3. guess that is why I drive a "saab" KIDDING--I am not pretenti0us
whoa, don't hit the nail too hard on the head, you'll embarass people =] Nasioc is at stage 4: Tenacious holding of the stage 3 fort by aggressively bombarding the stage 1 immigrants.
You guys have me crackin up here (LOL'ing if you will) at work. People keep looking at me weird. I tell them not to worry about it...it's just my "internet friends" You guys are great. Jason, how is your shoulder after your "incident" with my dog cage?
l33t has its origins in a few different places of frequent Internet activity. As a word, it derives from 'elite,' once used in the subculture as a designation for people particularly clued into the scene, and even being allowed access to hidden areas of online bulletin boards and forums. It still maintains it's original complimentary meaning, but now also designates the system of alphanumeric switching in typing, where numbers and symbol combinations are used to represent letters. The first most noticeable development in l33t came from creating secure passwords. Creating a completely random password makes them difficult to remember, but using a word straight from the dictionary makes it far easier to crack, as there are some programs out there that will input every available word to break an encryption. Integrating numbers and symbols can be a good way to evade these problems, and l33t allows for keeping the password in one's head as a word, but in the computer, it is an alphanumeric mix. One could remember the word 'armadillo' as a password easily, but typing it up as '4rm4d1||0' makes it more difficult to crack. In the same vein of variation, l33t is also being increasingly used to create unique handles, or user names, for various online sites. Once a person registers for a forum, chat room, website, et cetera under the name 'DemonHunter', that handle can't be used by anyone else (at 5 least, not without their stealing the password), and as more people sign on to the internet, more of the unique names disappear. One option is to begin removing vowels from the desired user name - 'DemonHntr', or 'DmonHnter', but that has a maximum limit of combinations as well, a much smaller limit too, once certain combinations are dismissed as incomprehensible (for example: 'DmnHntr'). Another option is to begin adding numbers to the end of the name, 'DemonHunter01', 'DemonHunter2003' and so on, but this has a tendency to scream "unoriginal" out to everyone who sees the series of names. So, with these constraints, more and more chatters are registering names constructed in l33t - 'd3m0nHunt3r', 'd3|\/|0nHu|\|73r' and so forth. This may not be any less unoriginal then the addition of numbers, but upon first glance, at least looks semi-unique. The major developments of l33t came out of filter and bot evasions. Filters are a list of words, phrases or addresses, that if an email comes in with any of the words, they will be either sorted into a specific folder in the mailbox, or they will simply be kill-filed, in other words, automatically deleted. For example, someone trying to filter spam2 out of their inbox may put words like 'mortgage', 'viagra' and 'webcam' in their filters. Filters can also be applied over a network as a whole, and with mass media's misrepresentation of the terms some newsgroup administrators would choose to filter out references to hacking or cracking. To get around these filters, newsgroup members would begin intentionally misspelling these hot words. Soon, the administrators would catch on and add the current misspelling to the filter lists, but l33t was too quickly adaptable for this to be truly effective. 1 http://www.bash.org/?341 6 Soon the encoding passed down to websites offering illegal software downloads (known as warez); the legal licensors of the software would sent 'bots', programs that scour the web looking for key words and phrases and then reporting their data back, out over search engines looking for mentions of their software name and download links. However, bots lack the ability to see the visual similarities between a word in l33t and the word they're looking for, so the providers of warez began evading bots the same way others before them had evaded filters. This is probably where the first standardizations began appearing. When simply writing out l33t to be read only, variation is acceptable as long as the other person can comprehend your representation of a word, but when searching the internet for a download, one encounters the same problem that stumps the bots: a Search Engine lacks the ability to see the visual similarities between a word in l33t and the word they're looking for. Thus, someone looking for an illegal copy of Adobe Photoshop to download would have to know what ways the title is likely to be encoded, even though they may have to make several separate searches, therefore, the natural development of a standardized system would develop to ensure that the providers of warez and the people seeking warez would be able to meet up. Now, for this paper, I'm distinguishing between standard chat abbreviations and l33t, although some people would argue that there is no real difference between the two. Net abbreviations replace letters with numbers based on their sound, such as '2-gether' or '4ever', whereas l33t replaces them based on their appearance. Net Shorthand is also about saving time in chatting, whereas l33t's purpose is to encrypt. So in Net Shorthand, the first person pronoun is 2 Spam: The internet equivalent of Junk Mail. The term Spam comes from a Monty Python sketch about the lunchmeat, where Vikings were singing the word until it drowned out all other conversation. 7 simply written 'i' and the second person pronoun is simply 'u', but in l33t they become '3j3' and 'j00.' There are varying styles of l33t, ranging from the basic, and easier to read, to the incredibly complex. Not all replacements are based solely on appearance, l33t also has an intriguing system of phonetic based replacements. For example, 'dude' becomes 'd00d' and 'newbie' becomes shortened to 'n00b'. Or, an example involving l33t itself, the /i/ sound is often transcribed as '33', such as the shift from /ilijt/ to [3l33t]. However, the use of these rules vary from user to user, so often there will be two acceptable ways to write the same word. letter switching sound switching fear fear /fijr/ ph34r ph33r There is also a tendency to switch around what would otherwise be expected in standard English. To use an above example of the /u/ sound, in cases where a word is already spelled 8 with two 'o's (and thereby, two '0's), occasionally the user may switch to using 'ew' in it's place, the most common example of this is using 'kewl' for 'cool', and in the Online Role Playing Game, Ultima Online, 'loot' is often written 'lewt'. This same phenomenon occurs with the switching of 'f' to 'ph' and vice-versa. This is what leads to 'fear' being transcribed as 'ph34r'. Interestingly enough, '****' is not included in this rule, despite (or indeed, because of) its frequency of use. The word final 's' also undergoes a regular change in l33t, being replaced with 'z'. To those who have studied English phonetics and morphology, this may seem a clever development, since word final /s/'s in English are, more often than not, pronounced [z], but the development again mostly developed as a need to be systematically different than the standard use. Thus why illegal software downloads are called 'warez' instead of 'wares'. Of course, since l33t is really a written language, this leads to occasional disagreements on whether 'warez' should be pronounced like 'wares' or like 'ware-ez', although the importance of this difference is negligible. Another change that would be familiar to Linguists, is the occasional replacement of 'y' with 'j' leading to words like j00 ('you') and j0 ('yo') One of the more interesting developments in l33t, is a structuring of a vague morphologic system. It began simply enough by changing the word 'hacker' to 'h4x0r' to evade newsgroup filters. H4x0r was meant as a noun, but soon it also became the l33t equivalent of the verb 'to hack', leading to 'h4x0ring' and 'h4x0r3d' as varying tenses thereof. The changes began as new people tried to assimilate into the subculture; they picked up l33t by watching others use it, but failed to pick up all the rules of the grammar and were left to fill in the mental blanks with their 9 own conclusions. Associating the 'x0r' with the 'ck' ending of 'hack' instead of the 'cker' ending of 'hacker', later users of l33t began using'x0r' for a variety of words ending in 'ck' - r0x0rz ('rocks'), fux0r ('****'), sux0r ('suck'), and even in some cases chix0r ('chick'). The next developmental step was using '0r' at the end of words that already terminated in 'x', such as 's3x0r' for 'sex'. Now, since 'h4x0r' and 's3x0r' are both the noun and the verb form, and 'fux0r', 'sux0r', and 'r0x0r' are verb form only, more recent learners of l33t have started associating the '0r' ending with verbs, leading to the appearance of '0wnz0rz' instead of the older form '0wnz' Even with such variations among users, there are still very clear lines about what can be acceptable as l33t and what is just incorrect. <rewben> wh00t, i made online fax server yo <rewben> it even w0rkz <m0f73> @)!!!!! <m0f73> theres no h in w00t3 As shown in the quote, it is still possible to misspell in l33t, as here m0f73 corrects another's spelling of w00t, even though w00t is only really considered a word in cyberspace (and not much of one either, it's equivalent to 'yahoo!' or 'yippee!'). And there are still many other developments in l33t that come from other systems of slang. Words from users’ native accents and dialects work their way into the lexicon, like 'hella' and 'wassup'. Some words look like they could have come directly out of Gangster Rap, and in fact, may have. Many of these terms, like 'pl4y4z' ('playaz' or 'players') entered into l33t from people trash-talking in online games. Another common feature with l33t users is toggle casing, 3 http://www.bash.org/?6301 10 or the alternation of capital and undercase letters, possibly used because it creates the same height shifts as mixing numbers and letters does. This is a purely cosmetic development, as such shifting would not deter bots or filters, which are typically not case-sensitive. There is also a general acceptance of common misspellings such as typing 'teh' instead of 'the' or 'pwn' instead of '0wn', since such errors are a result of typing at fast speeds. Also, over time elements of net shorthand have been integrated both for their time-saving aspects and from the confusion of which is l33t and which isn't. The Sociolinguistics of l33t speak: <Joe> Who invented l33t-speak? <Evil_Lawn_Gnome> Joe, I did. <milencho880> i invented it <Joe> Really? Good. I always wanted to meet the world's biggest ****ing idiots.4 The problem with l33t is that, as it was being formed, it was never intended to be a communication system, but rather a visual encryption code that could be read easily by human eyes but that would stump search engines. So then, why did people begin chatting in it? Mostly as an attempt to fit in and make ones computer skills seem better than they were. The logic may have gone something like this: Good hackers5 cracked good warez and good warez was hidden in l33t, so therefore good hackers must use l33t. This backfired in the same way that most attempts to appear like you fit in backfire: Using l33t in chat instantly identified you as a wanna-be, or in the slang of the group a "lamer" or "luser." True hackers and hard-core crackers, would not waste time on an inefficient typing system such as this and see people that do as "script kiddies" 4 http://www.bash.org/?14509 5 I use the term hacker here, because that’s what the person making this syllogism would think. Warez d00dz are actually a form of crackers. 11 or someone who writes viruses and cracks into systems using other people’s codes instead of writing their own. The following quote is an application of these script kiddie stereotypes - l33t speak and handles. l33t translations <@harb> Sith are like the script kiddies of Force users. <@harb> They all have silly handles. <@harb> "Darth Maul", "Darth Sidious", "Darth Tyranous". <@harb> "d00d ur most l33t l3tz g0 own sum j3di lol" "Dude, you are the most elite. Let's go beat some jedi. *Laughs Out Loud*" < mdxi> <ObiWan> Do not turn ot the Dark Side, Anakin < mdxi> <an4k1n> STFU F4G <anakin>"Shut the **** up, Fag" <@harb> <tyr4nous> d00d j0in m3 w3 c4n pwn 2gether!! <tyranous>"Dude, join me. We can rule together! <@harb> <ObiWan> I'll never join you, Dooku. <@harb> <tyr4nous> suk6 A l33t user in these circumstances would be considered an idiot, regardless of how good they could be. As one survey respondent stated: “People who use l33t couldn't hack a windows 9x box if they wanted to.†l33t became so popular among wanna-be hackers, that the official FAQ for the newsgroup alt.hacking contains the caveat: “Note, newbies, that l33t speak is not cool, and only makes it hard for people to read what you are trying to say (not to mention hard to type).†It should also be noted it's usually quite obvious when l33t users really don't have a clue how to hack at all. <xwred1> my friend on aim is annoying me I want to hack them 6 http://www.bash.org/?14449 12 <xwred1> I just want to get in and format his drive <xwred1> I asked him for his address ip and he said its 127.0.0.1 <TheOnyx> heh <TheOnyx> Do you know what 127.0.0.1 is? <xwred1> its an address <xwred1> loopback, or something, right? <xwred1> it loops to him, then back to me <xwred1> thats how I can hax0r him7 It's useful to know for this example that the IP Address 127.0.0.1 is self-referential; it's the IP one's computer reaches when it cannot connect to the internet at all. This hacker wanna-be is a little too easily tricked. As these were people who were desperate to fit into the online culture, the trend of l33t moved out of the hacking/cracking crowd and into the world of online gaming. Here it served some purpose as phrases like "ph34r m3" and "3j3 0wnzed j00" served as trash talking in competitive environments, but as fresh players, still new to the rules and behavior inside the game, l33t soon picked up negative connotations due to the playing style of those users. Among more serious gamers, people who use l33t are seen as not feeling the spirit of the game. People who play online Role Playing Games see l33t users as people who are failing to play "in character," a necessity in a game where the character is the purpose of playing. <ToddBored> FF118 is gonna suck, its gonna be MMORPG but on PS2 <ToddBored> will kill the whole fantasy part of the series, cuz there will be idiots in it <ToddBored> naming themselves kewldude, and kingpimpmaster <ToddBored> i dunno why they did it... <ToddBored> im serious dude <ToddBored> its not gonna have a story line to get into 7 http://www.bash.org/?7658 8 Final Fantasy 11 – Roleplaying game for the Play Station 2. In Development 13 <ToddBored> cuz all youre gonna hear is Lololo!!L!11 j000 got owned <ToddBored> i roxx at FF119 An EverQuest player described l33t users as being unwilling to commit the time involved to get a really good game developed, that they’re more interested in getting as many points possible as fast as they can, rather than developing the inter-character relationships and exploring the whole of the game. Similar problems arise in another popular RPG game, Ultima Online, where the users break down into "RPers" and "PKers" (Player Killers), a rivalry driven by the fact that PKers inhibit the character growth of RPers by constantly killing them off. Fig. 1 9 http://www.bash.org/?35524 14 Translations: Panel 1: UO = Ultima Online Panel 3: (assorted spell types in UO) Panel 4: "Dude! Stupid RPer had hella gold." l33t users in First Person Shooter (FPS) games are characterized as “campers,†people who stay in one strategic spot and just kill whoever walks by. Whereas camping could be seen as a legitimate strategy, if everyone camped, there would be no game, so this is seen as going against the spirit of the game. Campers also fail to protect their teammates, choosing raising their personal score over helping their “clan.†Again, this is seen as going against the spirit of 15 the game. Those stereotypes most likely developed from the added effort required to speak and understand l33t; a Role Player wouldn't use l33t because it would be out of character, a dedicated FPS player would spend more effort into actually playing the game, and possibly sending quick messages to teammates. In the regular Internet community, the use of l33t seems kind of standoffish. If the point of the Internet is to communicate more effectively, then why chat in a system that inhibits comprehension? l33t fails to impress regular Internet users because they don’t have many ties with the original culture that inspired it. So even though l33t may not carry the same taint of desperation to fit in, it instead carries a sense of wanting to intimidate people who don’t associate with this culture. However, when you have a large group of people all trying to fit in by using the exact same methods, eventually you will develop a group where using l33t will be considered a mark of coolness. These people will develop their own Quake clans and their own “hax0ring†groups to participate in. One such group can be found at http://www.l33t-haxors.com, which is a webpage community for l33t users. Most telling is the statement on the home page: This Sight i5aLL ab0ut HaXoring. /\ll of u5 Haxors H3R3 at L33t Hax0rs.c0m R /\ll l33t. And w3 own /\ll of joo sh1tty hax0r5 0ut th3re and \/\/3 o\/\/n /\/\icr0**** coz th3y is all gH3y, (\/\/3 still u53 IE-5 and \/\/|ndoze 95 tho coz th3y is g00d) but all of uz are l33t and if NE 0f y0uz out th3r3 pizz the h3ll outta uz w3 w|ll hax ure put3r coz w3 iz l33t nd U sh0ulD b3 afrAiD, coz w3 kn0w 3verything bout put3rs. W3 ju5t d0n't puT /\ny 0f th3 sTuFf w3 kn0\/\/ 0|\| 0ur 51T3 coz w3 D0|\|'T w/\nT NE1 3lse 2 no. Translation: This site is all about hacking. All of us hackers here at L33Thax0rs. com are all l33t. And we own all of you ****ty hackers out there and we 16 own Micro**** because they are all gay (we still use IE-5 and Windoze 95 though because they are good) but all of us are l33t and if any of you out there piss the hell out of us we will hack your computer because we are l33t and you should be afraid because we know everything about computers. We just don’t put any of the stuff we know on our site because we don’t want any one else to know. Note the empty threat at the end. They’ve tried to puff themselves up to appear dangerous but give no indication that they could actually do any damage. There is one problem with this example and that is that it may be just a joke by someone who dislikes l33t users. On many occasions it’s difficult to tell the mockery from the real thing when l33t is involved. Nowadays, l33t and the people who use it are a popular source of mockery on the Internet. The above example may or may not be one such joke. The homepage of someone with the user name DKHelmet10 has a "Low Intelligence Version" that consists of a blinding background, and annoying auto-play MIDI file, and various statements of superiority written entirely in l33t. More subtle mockery (or more subtle by Internet standards anyway) can be found in such online articles such as "How to be an Elite Online Wanker: 8 Easy Steps" from 3DActionPlanet.com which includes steps such as picking an intimidating name so one can “conjure images so intimidating that other players will be shaking so hard they won’t be able to keep their mouse form jerking all over the place.“ Other titles in this article series include "How to Form a Clan of Elite Online Wankers" and "How to Create a Webpage for Elite Online Wankers." The site Turkey Manor Design11 had a special "L33T Week" which documented some of the use of l33t as well as made fun of how it was used (this site was actually surprisingly useful considering it existed mostly to make fun of l33t users). Another way to mock l33t involves rewriting literature or movies in l33t for fun. One such example is a Flash Animation of 10 formerly at http://www.ghetto.org/~dkhelmet/, currently unavailable. 11 http://www.planetquake.com/turkey/l33t.htm 17 Romeo and Juliet as done in l33t, written and programmed by Chris Cotts12. Other such examples can be occasionally seen in IRC chat channels. <Isajeep> in fotr when gandalf first goes to see that other gay wizard what does he first say to him? <NickBlasta> stfu noob <Setzer> stfu noob <CRC> he says: "sup dawg, i r g4nd4lf da gr3y!" <CRC> we should get the script to LOTR and make it l33t <DC4ever> CRC - and then add subtitles to the avi13 of it, and rename it "L0rd of teh r1ngz0rs!" <CRC> legolas: chex0r this out! *stabs orc in eye with arrow* LOL! di3 f00l! *shoots another orc with arrow* pwned! <[H]Slacker> divx14? <NickBlasta> orc: CHEATER CHEATER WALLHACK!!1 <CRC> (when pippin/merry/whichever the **** knocks the armor down the well) Gandalf: omg, noob!15 Here, the chatters take a common reference point for the groups of them (The Fellowship of the Ring movie) brought up in a question, and run with it, adapting a basic response given to shoot down Isajeep, and translating the scene into l33t for fun. Mocking l33t has also become popular in many online comic strips. The strip MegaTokyo became extremely popular after only its ninth strip (fig. 1), which featured a l33t speaker on an airplane having medical difficulties and needing to find a translator, parodying a scene from the movie “Airplaneâ€Â. The Flight Attendant’s panel and line: “Does anyone here speak L33T?†was quickly given a line of merchandise including shirts, mugs and mouse pads. When one of the main characters, Largo (the one who could speak l33t), began to be depicted 12 http://myboringlife.com/l33t/romeo.html 13 .avi - a file extension denoting a video file 14 divx - a compression rate for .avi videos. Gives very high video quality for a relatively small data size 15 http://www.bash.org/?17291 18 wearing a T-shirt saying “3V1L L33T†the creators of the strip got so many requests for similar T-shirts, they started making them in less than a week of the comic strip being uploaded. Fig. 2 Translations: Panel 1: "The Pain!" Panel 2: "I need help", "I need you to get the doctor, I have some bad pains in my chest. I need my pills" Panel 4 (Largo): "Yo!" 19 As more storylines developed in the Megatokyo world, the character with a knowledge of l33t - Largo - would revert into speaking items of l33t while in his gamer mode which later occupies his time in reality as he becomes convinced there are Zombies invading Tokyo. Eventually his delusions end up with him hired as an English teacher at a Japanese high school, where his l33t-sp34k is considered to be "very dynamic English phrases."16 If one looks closely at the chalkboard in Figure 2, Largo's class rules (or "Rulz" rather) include "No Campers" and "No Lamers" 16 Megatokyo strip 7/25/2001 20 Fig. 3 Another online comic strip, Lethal Doses, featured a series of strips where someone finally gets to confront the gamers he likes the least (Figs 4 and 5). 21 Fig. 4 Translation: "Feel the wrath of '2Kool4U'" Fig. 5 Translation: "Check my mad skills, yo! 2Kool4U is elite, dudes. I will school you…" These strips manage to display much of the hostility felt by gamers towards l33t Users as well as the perceived confrontational attitude of l33t users. Yet another example is from the Comic Strip Funny Farm when the evil sentient Computer, PC, got around to creating a few lackeys. One is a handheld calculator who can speak only in equations, the other is a robot named ASKII who speaks only in l33t, which seems to frustrate PC (Figure 6) 22 Fig. 6 Translations Panel 1: "When do we go out to destroy things? I want to rip my claws into something!" Panel 2: "Come to my FTP! Let's kick butt! LOL" (FTP, File Transfer Protocol, possibly meant as like "Come to my place") Panel 3: "I will hack because they suck, LOL! Do we go to terrorize the world?" Panel 4: "Tore our ass" ? "<something> are ass"? Unclear. This ties in with the complaint many Internet users have with l33t speak, it’s barely comprehensible and the people who use it don’t interact very well at a social level. The same joke is used for a filler strip in Ghastly's Ghastly Comic17 in the form of a l33t primer. 23 Fig. 7. 17 http://ghastly.keenspace.com/d/20020512.html 24 25 The problem with this sort of humor catching on the way that it has is that it can become quickly overused. One survey respondent expressed concern that the use of l33t in humor could suffer the same fate as the phrase “All your base are belong to us,†from the game Zero Wing, which went from a clever sub-culture reference to overused in less than a month. One such sign is the slow awareness of l33t outside the internet subculture, like in an actual printed newspaper comic, like Bill Amend's Foxtrot: Fig. 8 It may not be as l33t intensive as online comics, and is more of a jab at internet shorthand typing, but 'd00d' is very much an example of l33t. The danger in the development of this outside awareness, is that it's just one step closer to being a part of popular culture. The assimilation of a sub-culture trend into popular culture, often leads to the original users abandoning the trend, and marking it as passé. One of the more interesting side effects of this mocking of l33t, is that using it as an occasional vocabulary item, say a single word or phrase, is perfectly acceptable. In one MegaTokyo forum post, someone referred to Japan 0wNzing as far as technology went. Others also consider the term “l33t†a light compliment. Someone may brag about their computer as being l33t, even if they wouldn’t normally use the language. 26 A news post for the comic strip Real Life referring to fig. 9 states: You think I'm joking. Seriously.... a while back, Adam's comp decided it didn't need a FAT anymore. Rather than suck it up and accept it like any of the rest of us, and because of the fact that he had an immeasurable amount of MP3's to save, he decided to sit down and rewrite his FAT. It worked. I kid you not. Adam is as l33t as they come.18 This is clearly meant as a compliment, despite the negative connotations that l33t usually carries. Fig 9. Conclusion: 18 www.reallifecomics.com, news post and comic strip for February 22, 2001 27 The speed of the Internet makes language evolve even faster than it would in the real world. In about a decade, L33T went from an encryption system to an attempt to be cool, to a way of being mocked, to a source of humor, to something that, when used in moderation, is acceptable and even occasionally complimentary. It is unlikely that L33T will ever become a fully acceptable typing system that anyone would use, but it should be interesting to see what traits and connotations it will develop in the near future, and what other qualities, or lack thereof, will become associated with it. Some aspects of l33t will remain constant regardless. Inside a system where fitting in is the key goal, standardizations will appeal alongside variations as new users attempt to assimilate the rules formed by past users, fully learning some rules, and incompletely learning others. 28 Terms, Slang and Jargon from the world of l33t: 0wnz: Verb used to represent superiority over something/someone. "3j3 0wn3d j00!" (I owned you) could reasonably be translated as "I kicked your ass." 0wn is occasionally misspelled as 'pwn' from the proximity of the keys, but people don't bother correcting that any more. 31337, l33t, elite: Came from old internet bulletin boards that required special access, if one had access they were one of the 'elite'. Over time it started entering its current forms, and became just generally a statement of skill. camper: someone in a First Person shooter game who hangs out in a single spot for a game, usually near an object vault, and just kills whoever comes near. Considered not in the spirit of the game. Often used in referring to l33t speakers. FPS: First Person Shooter, for games where the player IS the shooter. All you see of your character is the barrel of your gun. Quake and Counter-Strike are these sorts of games. l33t is commonly used for trash-talking in these games. frag: to kill. Usually used in First Person Shooter games. hax0r (sometimes haxx0r): Hacker, to hack IRC: Internet Relay Chat, old school text chatting. Connects to dedicated servers ("channels"), where rooms can be accessed (rooms would have names like #hackers, #warez and so on). Seen as a more l33t place to hang out than web based chats. lamer: Someone who is lame, pathetic, a 'luser' luser: From loser. Also a Unix reference to "Local User" started by system administrators meme: Links, jokes or themes that are passed from person to person via chats, forums, websites, etc… MMPOG, MMPORG: Massively Multi-Player Online (Role-playing) Game, a player logs on to an official server and can encounter anyone else who is playing at the same time inside the game. newsgroups: n00b: Derived from 'newbie', someone who is painfully fresh to the scene. Often used in referring to l33t speakers. OMG, OMFG: Acronyms for "Oh My (****ing) God" PK: Player Killer, people who gain levels in a game by going around and killing other players. RPGers hate this because it limits their ability to develop a character. pr0n: Porn. switching letters around is not unusual in l33t, and in many cases arise from common typos (such as 'teh' instead of 'the') q2, q3: Quake 2 and Quake 3. Very popular first person shooter games. script kiddie: Taken from old school hackers, it refers to someone who just uses pre-made codes to mess around with. Often used in referring to l33t speakers. STFU: Acronym for "Shut the **** up" commonly slung about in IRC rooms. w00t: Exclamation used to represent excitement or generally being pleased with something. Like yippee or yahoo wallhack: Cheat code used in First Person Shooter games that allows one to see through walls, making tracking easier, and in some cases even blend into the wall. warez: illegal software downloads. WTF: Acronym for "What the ****?" commonly slung about in IRC rooms. 29 Bibliography Amend, Bill. 11/18/2002. Foxtrot. http://www.ucomics.com/foxtrot/index.phtml Caston, Rodney and Gallagher, Fred. 9/01/2000 "Speak l33t?" Megatokyo. http://www.megatokyo.com/index.php?strip_id=9 Caston, Rodney and Gallagher, Fred. 7/25/2001. "I Will Teach Them Well." Megatokyo. http://www.megatokyo.com/index.php?strip_id=151 Caston, Rodney and Gallagher, Fred. 7/30/2001. "G.T.L. - Great Teacher Largo." Megatokyo. http://www.megatokyo.com/index.php?strip_id=153 Chambers, J.K. 1995. Sociolinguistic Theory. Blackwell Publishers Inc, Massachusetts. Cotts, Chris. l33t romeo. http://myboringlife.com/l33t/romeo.html. Danet, Brenda. 2001. Cyberpl@y: Communicating Online. Oxford International Publishers Ltd, United Kingdom. Dean, Greg. 2/22/2001. Real Life Comics. http://www.reallifecomics.com/d/20010222.html Dery, Mark. 1994. Flame Wars: The Discourse of Cyberculture. Duke University Press. DKHelmet. 4/2001. DKHelmet's Homepage: Low Intelligence Version. http://www.ghetto.org/~dkhelmet/ Currently Unavailable Ghastly. 5/12/2002 "Elite Speak For Beginners." Ghastly's Ghastly Comic. http://ghastly.keenspace.com/d/20020512.html Guilty and Blaxthos. The IRC Quote Database. http://www.bash.org Hormel Corporation. "Spam & The Internet" The Official Spam Home Page. http://www.spam.com/ci/ci_in.htm [email protected]. Fall 2002. "Fun Password Facts Revisited." 2600 - The Hacker Quarterly. Volume 19, Number 3. 2600 Enterprises Inc, Setauket NY. Kendall, Lori. 2002. >Hanging Out in the Virtual Pub: Masculinities and Relationships Online. University of California Press, Berkeley. Lessig, Lawrence. 1999. Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace. Basic Books, New York. Pew, Lemuel. 2002. "Nowhere is Safe." Lethal Doses. http://www.lethaldoses.com/archives.php?stripnum=11
my opinion is if you want this forum to be more professional and inviting to the average person then talk normally... I hate watching this typing and if the only mature suggestion is to deal with it and leave then maybe myself and o9thers may just stop and NOT recommend this site to others because of those attitudes etc... or have a forum for STOOOOPID talk
We have a f0rum f0r t3h yu0r st00pid tAlks....its cAll3d t3h yu0r OffTopic Forum LOL!!11 Don't li3k 0fft0p1c 1n t3h yu0r 0fft0pic?!1
all I am saying for me is that when I see a bunch of that writing in the "serious" sections more than the off topic I tend to hit the all read button and log out cause it is a waste of my time to bother reading, cause I dont think it adds anything to the chat... my .0000000002 cents worth
wrxboy, i think you are a cool guy, but trying to get p33ps to 5t0p talking l1k3 this 1s like beating a dead horse, its not gonna do any good. if a rule was in place to not talk in this way people would rebel against it and just stop typing all together.
