Where did leet speak come from?

[Doc Sark]

Right.

Please don't reply to this thread in leet speak because I find it irritating and unreadable, but I am curious to know how the stupid non language came about in the first place. Does anybody know?

[Nait]

It's not a language, it's an orthography and a dialect. And many times, more consistent than English orthography itself.

Kinda fascinating, really. It must have started with things like the number-puns "4ever" and so forth - and gone further than that, finally replacing common letters for numbers that resemble those letters - 3 being one of the more profilic ones.

That's the orthography part - it goes further than the 3 as time goes by - but the dialect comes from the people who use it. Probably multiplayer FPSers.

All in all, quite fascinating.

[Meat Puppet]

Yes. Quake. Nerds. So I hear.

[Dragonfire]

yes, it mostlikely started in early multiplayer first-person shooters. early number things like Nait pointed out, probably start in very early chat rooms when the internet got popular.... along with other short phrases like "lol" or "brb"

[Mo-Nercy]

/\/\0-/\/3|2cy

Leet was fun for a while, yes.

[Loony BoB]

A few things that helped lead to the god-awful 'leet' speak, and they aren't all online:
1) AOL, Y!M, Hotmail and other such ID-related things that thousands upon thousands of online users are a part of. "I can't register Daniel? That sucks. Hmm, maybe if I do what I did with my number plate and make it D4N13L... yeah, that'll work." Another way these large companies influence such things is by restricting character length. "I want to be Daniel Forever but I can only have ten characters... I know, I'll use 'Daniel4eva'!"
2) Customised number plates, as stated above. The ID's people use were the first things to have 'leet' speak, you see, and it branched out from there.
3) Text messaging. Again, shortening words to fit into a restricted character length. People get used to it a little too fast.
4) Hackers/Porn sites/etc: They try to get around search filters and firewall filters by typing in 'leet'.
5) Real-time online gaming: People type shortened words so they can get back into action faster. Don't want to get shot while you're typing and all. This is for those who are slower typers, too.
6) Slow typers: Some people are bloody slow typers and this speeds things up dramatically for them.
7) Imbociles: Well, you know.

Customised number plates are in my opinion the first things to bring about mass 'leet' usage.

EDIT: On a sidenote, the article for 'leet' in Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leet) made me laugh so much. The oh-so-formal attitude displayed is, to me, a hilarious contrast.

[Nait]

Language is a serious matter. In ten or twenty years, people will be writing this stuff up. Like it or not, l33t is a part of the history of the Internet, a part of the history of the English language.

As BoB implied, much of l33t springs from the medium. Constraints are a challenge, and people take up those challenged different ways. l33t is one answer to the need of uniqueness, to the constraint of length, and so forth. And it took a life of its own.

BoB - thanks for the Wikipage. Fascinating stuff. Kids, this is your history, remember it well.

[chu52]

L33t (spell it properly) originated from geeks who where tired of people speaking in bianary so they made l33t, but the thing that got it so popular was www.megatokyo.com which is a great web comic thatis the origin of l33t

[Loony BoB]

A quick search on the internet tells me that megatokyo began in 2000. 'Leet' (which is the English translation of 1337, while l33t is merely a mutated mixture of the two) was around long before then.

[chu52]

megatokyo only made it mainstream

[cactuar_12]

I heard it was invented to hide h4x0r sites from search engines, like Bob said...

[Cz]

I forsee a time when people all over the world speak Leet. If you ever become one of those people, I suggest buying yourself some fire-proof clothing.

I really, really don't like Leet-speak.

[Rainecloud]

Interesting stuff, no doubt.

Thankfully, the "Craze" seems to have died down somewhat in recent times.

[FreaQaZoiD]

I heard it was invented to hide h4x0r sites from search engines, like Bob said...

i am also in agreement with this. If u read Gallagher's rant on the first |337 ep. of MT, it does indeed state that the episode was an acknowlegement of |337 and not its creator...also backed up by the book which includes many other Fun Facts of MT.

~~~Megatokyo (http://www.megatokyo.com)

*Sigh* i hate the new episodes. Its mention here brings back fond old memories of the Webcomic, originally about a pair of gamers and best friends... but now...grweggg...URGE TO KILL RISING

Oh some Ritalin!

Ahhhh....The solution to all life's problems. Ritalin :)

[Lord Chainsaw]

I really can't understand why people are so annoyed by 1337 speak. Personally, I find regular internet slang to be far, far more annoying, such as lol, lmao, and of course the ever so annoying "meh" (can there be anything more annoying then meh?)


And this of course, is Man of the Year:

http://www.princeton.edu/~pauper/02-01-28/leetspeak.htm

[Maxico]

I always assumed that it was formed by Counter Strike clans so that they could communicate to each other without the other people or new people understanding them.

[m4tt]

I think the whole "u" instead of "you" shows laziness or stupidity. I see it all the time in Ragnarok Online. There are some exceptions, like a friend of mine is from a foreign country, so I don't care how she types. Atleast she's trying.

I like what happened the other night. My friend and I were leveling with the help of a higher leveled wizard type guy. Over and over he kept calling us "noobs" and saying other things like "wtf u need 2 hit dat guy" My friend and I were both getting annoyed, so he said "We may be 'noobs' but at least we are literate." I think he confused the wizard, because all he could do was say "stfu noob".

[Maxico]

For a long time when people said stfu I thought they misspelled stuff: "stuff noob, whats a stuff noob?"

[TasteyPies]

70s hackers

[ZeZipster]

I see a lot of it on big IRC networks, along with people threatening to "nuke" (which is actually a way of saying launch a DoS attack, which have been useless for quite some time now) me. I think when a script (Hennes script for mIRC) came out that auto-translated normal talk in to this babble, it was all down hill...

[UltimateSpamGrover]

70s hackers

long live the 70's

[Yamaneko]

I invented the Internet. Must've been me.

[chu52]

I invented the Internet. Must've been me.

But your not Bill gates... are you? (although he did not)

[Zell's Fists of Fury]

Al Gore.

[FreaQaZoiD]

The Internet was invented by the Russians later in the Cold War as a communications system through computers

[Yamaneko]

You see?

[Zell's Fists of Fury]

And Al Gore is Russian. It makes perfect sense!

[Meat Puppet]

Either way it sucks so don't use it :mad2:

[nik0tine]

it is very possible that his 'leet speak' could actaully make it's way into the dictionary. i have seen words like homer simpsons "doh" in the dictionary. If this happens, the internet may ahve been responsible for single handedly ruining the english language. It's pretty pathetic that people talk, or even type like this. i can understand the "u" or "2" kind of stuff, but leet speak is just far to much in my opinion.

[Nait]

<b>If this happens, the internet may ahve been responsible for single handedly ruining the english language.</b>



:O_O:

...

:exdee: :laughing:

[Meow]

<a HREF="http://www.google.com/intl/xx-hacker/" target=_blank>Hilarity</a>.

[Doc Sark]

Thanks. I am now educated on the origins and complexities of l33t speak. Don't worry Czanthor, I won't be purchasing a fire proof suit in the near future!