"remember kids, proof read what you nick off the web first"
you think thats bad? our class was given homework to do research, so i bang it into the wiki, and paraphrase the results, then i add what i found out somewhere else into the article and re-word it into my essay
My best friend does his the night before and finds the wiki on google and copies my article striaght off, adds that he got the info of wikipedia, and gets more marks than me!
I have no idea what Wikipedia says on the subject but it originally evolved from the comms BBS scene. In the olden days, before the internet that you young snipes use now, we had BBS' (Bulletin Board Services) which where basically a place to download illegal software and pornography and take part in the Barnet Barbrawl messaging service.
People would dial in via their modem (proper modem's in their original form that modulated and demodulated a digital signal to analogue, hense the term modem, not like these little neet boxes you young kippers have now!) into a computer setup with BBS software, also with a modem, and they would exchange files and post on message boards.
As a general rule you had to upload before you could download, and you had a ratio based on your user access level, if you where new you probably had a ratio of 3 bytes download for every 1 byte you uploaded.
Sometimes somebody of status on the 'scene' would dial into a BBS and would be recognised for their contributions to the wider 'scene' in general and consequently have their account access upgraded to an unlimited ratio, meaning they could download without having to upload. This level of access was reserved for the crackers, hackers and all round bad guys the corporations base their more legal but just as criminal extorsions on. They where called elites.
People on the comms scene generally used abbreviations because back in those days we paid 10p a minute for calls, and modems where slow as hell, so speach looked a bit like SMS today, only a little less evolved:
thy tlkd like this m8
One of the things that was generally the norm on BBS' was the use of graffitti (then a big thing) style banners next to each download showing who the cracker was, this was stored in a file called file_id.diz (used by amiBBS software).
Somewhere along the line the abbreviated language became perverted into a decorated language probably because of 'lamer' (read newbie, but more derrogatory) miss-interpretation of the difference between a banner and an abbreviation, so the written word evolved.
Ultimately the word elite would be spelled l337, along with various other incarnations because the illeterates who used l337, as one can well predict, have quite poor spelling skills anyway.
Over time, missinterpration, a general silence from those who where there when the building blocks where laid (at least until the statute of limitations runs out) etc the term l337 has been incorrectly and now permanently associated with this written language.
To the extent that when I first saw somebody use the term l337 on an internet forum it had to be explained to me too.
Becky Rose
former elite
statute of limitations expired
Edit: I just skim read the Wikipedia article, it seems to imply 1337 started with internet culture, so it's only a few decades out.
Oh here's a little anecdote I found funny at the time. A while ago I got into a forum argument with a kid, or rather, he had a go at my point of view and I didn't understand a word he was saying. He was using his own abomination of 1337.
I suggested he speak in English, as that appeared to be his native language, I would then be able to translate his words into grown up. His reply was that he was using 1337 because that is the language of the youth today and that they had taken English and adapted it to their generation.
my favourite quote in language is from Raymond (Rowan Atkinson) in The Thin Blue Line, he is a police chief gtalking to his officers about not using "London Cockney Slang", just as he says this Inspector Grim walks in saying "Right, sorted my son" etc, Raymond turns to him and says...
"Todays modern police force is fluent in many of todays languages, but not as I fear, complete and utter prat"
mwhahahaha
