Quote: "even before the internet I believe"
Yep, the l337 phenomenon started with comms but has been whole-sale abused by the SMS generation, and has changed considereably as a result.
brb used to imply that you where ready (I forget the exact meening) but came to meen "be right back". As an old time comm-artist this caused me some confusion when playing online games for the first time... !
l337ness has also become harder to read as the SMS generation have taken it to extremes. Originally the language evolved as a set of fairly simple and easy to implement/read abbreviations for comms communication which helped to reduce phone bills for the slower typists.
"Hi m8" most of us can recognise as "Hello mate", these early and practical applications where the domain of comm-artists and consequently also the "elite" of that community, so lets look at who the elite where:
"Elite" was the title given to comm-artists of standing, those who's contribution to the scene where noteable enough to make them recognised and deserving of credit.
In real terms this translated to more than just recognition as it had other advantages too, in the old days of comms we had what we called a ratio so i'll explain this.
The net allows us to download as much as we want, but back in the days of comms this would have tied up a phone line on the server constantly and most of them had only between one and four lines. Endless browsing just wasn't practical, so to limit file leeching the ratio system was concieved.
What this meant was that in order to download from a server (called a BBS or Bulletin Board Service) you first had to upload. Your ratio determined how many bytes you could download for every byte you uploaded.
A typical starting ratio would be about 3-1, so for every byte you upload, you could download 3. A good ratio would have been 7-1.
If you where elite, and by this I meen globally recognised amongst the BBS community, then you didn't have to worry about ratios. All you did was log into a BBS and the Sysop would recognise your handle, after confirming that you where not an immitator - even though your on a new board - you would automatically have the ratio limit taken off.
Elite's where truly elite, it had nothing to do with how badly you typed the English language. It was all about status and therefor if you where accredited with being an elite the odds are you really where.
To become elite it was necessary to contribute to the community. In my case, I was notorious the world over.
I no longer use an internet handle except when playing online games i'll call my character something other than myself (after all i'm not really a blue skinned evil knight), in the days of comms though this was necessary because very few of my activities would have been approved by the authorities.
Courtesy of the statute of limitations I can announce that I was Jaguar of the group Hellfire.
I dont really care for anonymity now, I am who I am. I have a past, and I have a future and I dont hide from either. I can understand why some people would preffer to remain anonymous though as we are constantly reminded of perverts and such like on the net, but I dont see myself as under threat from these kinds of people and if I was i'd soon retaliate despite the anonymity of others, I was after all, an elite.
God created the world in 7 days, but we're still waiting for the patch.
