I have to define a few things for those that have absolutely no clue how to read l33tsp3ak, so here goes:
l33t (or 1337 if going for the full monty), is the word elite that’s gone through several transformations to ultimately end up the way it did. First it was elite, and then leet. Lite didn’t work because the pronunciation is different and it’s a completely different word in definition, so for the sake of phonetics (as in to keep the "e as in bee" sound), leet was used. Leet then had letters substituted with numbers that resembled the letters they once were. The number 3 looks like an E in reverse, so E was now 3. And because capital letters are "uncool", everything is lowercase, and you end up with l33t.
For any other instance where a letter could be replaced with a number, whatever word was being typed out followed suit. 3 looks like E and 4 looks like A, so speak was now sp34k.
It was mainly true that most who used l33tsp34k only substituted the vowels A, E, I, and O with numbers 4, 3, 1 and 0. As l33tsp34k "progressed", so to speak, other letters were written out using characters that when seen looked like a letter, such as H written as |-|.
Where did l33tsp34k come from?
Not the internet.
l33tsp34k appeared in BBSes first.
What was the point of it? Was there ever a point?
Yes, there was a legitimate reason for using l33tsp34k. The point of using it was to hide information in plain sight. During the days of underground BBSes, many traded software illegally (mostly games), so there had to be a way to announce certain things in public either on-BBS or in an echo that went under the radar of police organizations.
If for example someone wanted to announce, "I have Space Quest 4 ready for download here on [name here] BBS", police organizations were routinely monitoring echoes for keywords to catch underground BBSers in the act. The way around this was to simply type out words that didn’t send up red flags from a text scan. Space Quest 4 would instead be typed out as sp4c3 qu3st iv.
The ruination of l33tsp34k
A lot of kids quickly discovered l33tsp34k and thought it was "cool", so they started typing everything they did on BBSes in that way. After that happened, what was "cool" was now seriously "uncool", because you don’t want to be typing the same thing a 10-year-old would.
Could l33tsp34k still be used today?
The whole point of l33tsp34k was to hide information in plain sight, but Google is very, very aware of how to translate it, so it’s pointless to use it anymore. The only reason to use it at all is to convey a style and/or attitude and nothing more. l33t as a means of communication has been retro for years given the fact it’s been around since the 1980s.
On a final note, 600673 is "Google" in l33t, and that just happens to be an alternative Google search in l33t "language". Yes, really. Go to www.600673.com and see for yourself. It’s not a joke site; Google owns that domain.
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