I realized this the other day, I think it was because I was looking at it a
different way. Where I used to think it was sort of funny, I'm finding it to
be annoying now. But here's my idea:

It seems to me that leet speak is used by people to poke fun at the people
on the internet who actually talked that way. Maybe leet speak isn't the
correct term for it, maybe "retarded gamer/AOL user" is more fitting. I'm
not necessarily talking about H4xX02 5p34K, but the whole "lolz teh
omg!!11 i trad itam 4 sexx kkthx" thing (though they seem to go
somewhat hand in hand). That's all well and good, people who talk like
that should be made fun of anyway. But then I realized that there
aren't many people, indeed there are very few who genuinely talk like
that (even in Diablo). So now we have to wonder why so many people
use it in a parodic sense when the people they're making fun of are
far...FAR fewer.

The conclusion I've come to is that the people who think they're making
fun of others are in fact the only ones who are actually talking in the
way that they're making fun of. So it seems the joke is on them.

This has been Optium's essay of the day. Thank you.

.opt