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"And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language;
and this they begin to do; and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined
to do. Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one
another’s speech. So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth; and
they left off to build the city. Therefore is the name of it called Babel (Confusion); because the
Lord did there confound the language of all the earth, and from thence did the Lord scatter them
abroad upon the face of all the earth" (Gen. 11:6-9) |
And so was it written.
It's a well-known fact in this world of ours, that languages have a tendency to diverge. What is one language
on this day may become two, then three, then four languages the next, and for each day after that, as
people spread to new corners of the world and meet isolation from one another. Neal Stephenson's sci-fi
romp of badassity, Snow Crash, explores the concept in depth, and the Bible pegs the source at
God fracturing the unity of human language at the Tower of Babel.
But such is perhaps too lofty and grandiose an explanation for what we are about to unravel . . . No,
the story of the 1337 is far less inspiring. | |
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Can you read the above? If you can, two points:
a) do not be insulted and
b) I'm sorry you've had the displeasure of learning the language before I could get to you
That said - and I'm talking to the rest of you now - let's get started.
You may have, in your internet-perusing career, encountered a body or line of text, so encrypted in an alpha-numeric
shroud as to be seemingly nonsensical. You may have been called 'j00', and misinterpreted the title
for a declaration of Anti-Semitism. Perhaps someone has even claimed to have "owned" you, regardless of the fact that you
cannot recall having been in any position of indentured servitude, slavery, or other form of bondage
at a prior junction in your life. You may have, my friend, stumbled upon the language of the 1337.
Behold. | | |
Once upon a time English was English. And then something bad happened: Halflife was invented. By this point in time the internet had been
around for a while, and game companies were starting to capitalize on the opportunity to peddle off 'online' games to the PC gamer
community. These unique, and at the time, innovative, titles were the first to introduce the world to the prospects of killing people
thousands of miles away from the comfort of your plush, swivelly computer chair. Halflife was the flagship title [years later the boat still
refuses to sink].
So what did Halflife do that was so bad, exactly? Well, Halflife attracted legions of gamers under its flag, and amongst these were the
worst of people: arrogant, self-righteous 11-year olds completely turned off by the idea of 'normal social interaction'. These were the same
kids that had, for years at this point - practically back up to the point when Al Gore invented the internet - been posting, or should I say
"flaming", on any and every message board they could find, spewing their tales of injustice in the prepubescent world, proclaiming their
own infallibilty, and - most importantly in context of this article - butchering the English language unchecked.
And thus do we lay a groundwork for what was to come.
In the warm crucible of the electronically-networked world, protected from normal social interaction, a language barrier was slowly developing.
In the bowels of the internet did great things transpire - thousands upon thousands of juvenile minds were unleashed into a melting pot of
stupidity, and there did they bastardize our language, lay waste to grammar, become ignorant to the neccesity of recognizable spelling,
and in their near drunken-like state of e-social ecstacy abandon all inklings of etiquette. Lines of distinction between to, two, and too
dissolved. Contractions no longer warranted the need of an apostrophe. Periods were deemed a waste of good run-on sentence writing space. And
it was not that the offenders knew better and took instead creative liberty in the quality and form of their communication, but rather
that they simply did not know better, and were too lazy to learn. Or care.
When Halflife finally did arrive from over and beyond the horizon it offered this disturbing demographic exactly what it craved:
the opportunity to kill stuff (to satisfy those fits of rage induced by hormones their bodies were not old enough to make yet), and combined
that also with the opportunity to kill stuff in front of other people. This was not entirely new, but Halflife was the defining
title for the genre, dubbed "online first-person shooter", and hence it bears the burden of guilt, and it is there that I shall point my finger
of judgement.
On the battlefield blossomed not love, but a need for quick, testosterone-laden insults and catch phrases, preferably stripped of any resemblance
to "conventional English", because when you're trying to let your auto-aim hack pull off a cheap grenade kill on a group of people before one of them can target his
own auto-aiming cheating ass back at you, you don't have time to be "coherent". Just cool. Or shall we say . . . "elite"?
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Unfortunately, the budding language of the elite escaped its digital violence riddled cocoon, and burst forth onto other scenes of the internet,
dragging its dripping, oozy tentacles ahead of itself. Where it lay its grasp the weak of mind became affected: the word "owned" became
familiar vocabulary. Bearing (hopefully) little resemblance to the concept of slavery, "owned" is perhaps best translated - and please,
remember to enunciate this in a crackling twelve-year old's voice in a fit of joy and self-conviction - "Ha! I just showed you! In your face! Now lick my reproductive
region!" Of course, that's way too long and complex a thought to type out when you're overwhelmed with an impermeable sensation of
superiority, which is, consequently, exactly what endorses the need for a word like 'owned' in the first place.
Also thrown into the bag was the omnipotent suffix "xorz", alternatively spelled "zorx" and "xorz" and even "zorz" on occasion. What significance
this little syllable has besides sounding cool is unbeknownst to me, but I am aware that it will appear as an additional syllable at the end of a word,
or sometimes replace the last syllable. i.e. :
owned -> ownxorzed
or
rock (as in, "That rocked!") -> rockxorzed (as in, "That rockxorzed!")
And of course, there is one particular chunk of vocabulary that simply cannot escape explanation: elite. To be elite is not just to be cool -
no, elite is to be the best, the top, the cream of the crop. To be elite is to be King of your virtual fantasy universe where you can't
be touched.
'Elite' is perhaps the most interesting
story, because it is a story of evolution. Allow me to demonstrate:
At one point in time, elite was:
elite
Later, when people realized more syllables = less cool, an 'e' was removed, leaving us with:
lite
Now, of course, this was easily mistaken with the advertising-favored alternative spelling of the word "light", so lite's blip fell off
the radar quickly, only to be replaced by the much more creative spelling of: leet
Do you see what I do? Hint: capitalize the E's. Someone noticed it - 3's look like backwards e's. And hence, leet became:
l33t
Later, when people realized the potential to never leave the numberpad of their keyboard while still approaching some distant element
of intelligibility, the 'l' and 't' were replaced with their numerical counterparts '1' and '7' . . . which leaves us with - you guessed it! :
1337!
And there you have it! The origin of '1337'. On an aside, it is important to note that some groups of 1337-speakers decided that the old ways
of two syllables is best, and changed 1337 into '31337'. Just think - twenty seconds ago that might've looked completely alien to you, but now
you cannot only read it with ease, but you can also quantify its immense levels of stupidity and uselessness!
Conversion of letters into similar-looking numbers or characters was an important step in that for the first
time it truly drew the language of the elite outside of easy comprehension. For instance, looking at '0wn3d'
is significantly more intimidating than 'owned.'
The standard translations are as follows:
A = 4; E = 3, O = 0, T = 7, S = 5 or $, L = 1
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Looking back now, it's easy to understand how the replacement of letters with numbers functions: they look homologous enough, though
they bear enough fundamental differences to allow the 1337 to withdraw from allowing the un1337 to comprehend their conversations.
But how did it start? Who originally made the observation that numbers can resemble letters? The 1337 may truly be exactly the type of
people that will avoid expending energy to make their speech comprehendable at any cost, and instead push their efforts towards mutilating its
integrity to outside readers, but the conversion itself, the initial realizations imply some level - however basic it may be - of ability
to rationalize, and draw parallels. To compare, to contrast. To do exactly the type of thing their English teachers tell them to do - and this is where the paradoxical
element arises: learning and thinking is not for the 1337, so how was 'progress' made towards a total facelift of the 1337 language?
Well, like any anthropologist can tell you, oftentimes research is forced to fall into the realm of mere theory and guess work, as
few written records of history or other such evidences may be available to paint a more confident image of the chronology. And since
the 1337 are too busy getting their kill counts up in Quake 3, or finding hacks for Counterstrike and Diablo, we here are left to
theororize and extrapolate, and try to best piece together the past as we can.
Knowing what I do about the nature of the 1337 - namely that they froth at the mouth when given the opportunity to look like idiots
and lack all ability to rationalize -
I have come to the conclusion that numbers entered the scene purely by accident. Leading candidates for the spearheads of this conversion are o = 0 and
e = 3, because of the close proximity of each homologue to one another on standard keyboards.
It's hard to imagine the type of higher-order conversation that would've led to this revolution, but I'll try my best to recreate the scene:
*** Now talking in #halflifehackers
*** Topic is ' im awsom!~11!! nd semiautomatic657 is a faggit!!1'
*** Set by i_own_u_in_CS on Sat September 06 23:58:10
<extremehacker5> yea so tihs new autoaim hack is the best
<extremehacker5> it lets u aim like 5000000343500 x fastor then the last one
<i_own_u_in_CS> ne1 want too play some CS? ill own you all!11
<extremehacker5> i tried it last night and hda teh hi score for 4 rounds strait
<the_best_sniper> bullshit my autoaim hack si at least twice as fast as yours!!!1
<extremehacker5> no its not man i could destroy you so easily with mine
<the_best_sniper> ur a faggit no u couldnt
<i_own_u_in_CS> nE takers? ur all just scared cause ill OWN U!!!!!! hAHAAH
<extremehacker5> i could two
<i_own_u_in_CS> hahahahah i own u all!!!11 hhahahahahha!!11
*** tinasexslave0384 has joined #halflifehackers
<tinasexslave0384> Hi Boys! ^_- want to see some high quality beastiality pix? see me get naked and take it hard from three guys at once
along with a horse and two goats! You won't be disappointed! See you there: www.wildanimalsex.com
<i_own_u_in_CS> hahahaA i culd own goats in CS!!11
*** tinasexslave0384 has left #halflifehackers (Kicked by elitespamcontrolbot)
<extremehacker5> shut th3 fcuk up 0wn u
<i_own_u_in_CS> what
<extremehacker5> sory my fingers slipped when i went to hit the 'e' in 'the' and the 'o' in 'own'
<the_best_sniper> fagot
[Author's note: elite halflife players are not polite enough to apologize, nor are they nearly this articulate]
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And there you have it: this is likely how the process went about. Afterwards, secretly of course, those present would reflect on
what they had seen, and use the "cool" alternates for E and O on their friends, claiming they were the creators. From there it would
spread into an epidemic, a putrid, viscuous veil that gradually consumed all susceptible to 1337hood. Since then enormous leaps away
from English, deep deep into the Babel effect, have been made: modern "1337" is so convoluted that even I cannot recognize the half of it.
With a little effort though, you'll be able to list possibilities for what you think something like "/\/\-| gr0|=3ri3 1|57
|5 1337!!111" might mean.
Per your covenience I provide you with a brief translation guide for more common 1337ities:
| 1337ity | Practical Application/Direct Translation (if possible)
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elite/1337 |
"So far beyond cool and awesomeness it's not even measurable - above YOU" |
| own(ed) |
Destroyed, eradicated, outdone. Use it when
you're showing someone up. |
| kthxbye |
A declaration of finality. Use it to get the last word before rapidly logging off AOL IM or putting someone on your
block list in Everquest. |
| x0rz |
??? uh... add it to the end of words |
| 1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 0 |
L, E, A, S, T, O, respectively |
| t3h |
The new "the". Cooler than the original because it is simultaneously spelled wrong and 1337ified. |
| j0/j00/j00r |
yo/you/your, respectively. Like the originals, except with a trace of speech impediment! |
| ph@7 13wtz |
"phat loot" - pretty much exclusive to massively multiplayer online rpgs, 'phat loot' indicates
a coming of profound wealth, typically off a slain monster |
| m4d 5ki11z |
mad skills. Not angry skills, rather, really really unquestionably awesome skills |
| ph34r |
Fear. As in "ph34r my mad skills" |
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Before I wrap up I'd like to show you something, something that so exemplifies 1337 in its purest form. This is a piece of a conversation
between a friend of a friend of mine, breaking up with his girlfriend over AOL instant messenger (try to save your pity, from everything
I've heard she deserved every word and was cheating on him).
FriendofaFriend:
can i stop talking now i think i made my point
AnonymousFemale:
omg, y are you doing this?
FriendofaFriend:
Heres a condensed version :
1. i dont feel like having a girlfriend
2. you hurt me to much sometimes
3. owned
4. owned again
5. cut
6. kthxbye
FriendofaFriend:
just accept it i dont want a girlfriend
FriendofaFriend:
goodbye
AnonymousFemale:
wow so much for not wanting to hurt me
FriendofaFriend:
meh
FriendofaFriend:
sorry
AnonymousFemale:
no your not..
FriendofaFriend:
meh
AnonymousFemale:
...very very cruel
FriendofaFriend:
im going to go on a date with ddr right now
tho, so ill ttyl bye
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You might notice some things: no words spelled with numbers, surprising level of coherency. Very untypical of the 1337.
But notice what he did do: he used the word 'owned' twice, to make the split as painful as possible. He said kthxbye, which, as
I just discussed, IS the last word, always. To top it all off he even exited by saying he was "going... on a date with ddr [dance dance revolution]".
When you get down to it, 1337 isn't about the numbers, it isn't about making your W's out of forward and backslashes (\/\/). What 1337 is
about is preserving a certain mentality, expressing your incontrovertible righteousness, regardless of whether or not what you say
holds any merit. Being 1337 is like spending two hundred thousand dollars on a car, or ramming a plane into the World Trade Center: it's
saying "I'm a dick - hear me roar."
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