“Shoot-‘em-up” games? That’s not l33t at all, n00b! Pwnage! Anything look familiar?

The good news is that these messages are likely just harmless taunts from other players. Judging from your “shoot-‘em-up” comment, we’d say a good analogy might be the terms “square” or “L7.”

The bad news? If you thought LOL and BRB were all you had to learn, you’ve got another thing coming. “O RLY?” you say. Yes, really. SRSLY, pay attention.

This pseudo-language is called Leetspeak. Sources differ on the exact origin, but most agree that it was born in on-line Bulletin Board Systems (BBSes) – the precursors to today’s Internet, popular in the 80s. The term “elite” was used to describe what we would call “power users” today.

From there it gets murkier. Some speculate that BBS users misspelled words or substitute numbers for letters to defeat text filters. This allowed them to use expletives, discuss verboten topics, and search for pornography (pr0n) or unlicensed “softwares” (warez). Ever misspell a dirty word to get around an e-mail or chat filter? Then you can relate.

Others believe that users demonstrated familiarity with computers by using numbers and punctuation in place of letters. You’ve got to be proficient with a keyboard to turn “PropellerHeads are awesome!” into “Pr0p3ll3rH34ds r /-\w3s0m3!!1!!” while firing off chat room messages.

Eventually, “elite” lost a syllable and became “leet” – you wouldn’t pronounce “lite” correctly, would you? It further devolved into “l33t” and was later perfected into the sublimely letterless “1337.” Pretty sw33t, huh?

Leetspeak followed users onto the Internet, finding frequent use in network-connected video games. Some words crawled into the mainstream, so that even technophobes realize a n00b is a “newbie” or novice, and that lamer is an insult.

So now you can impress your kids by leaving Leetspeak notes in their lunchboxes, right? Don’t worry about memorizing any rules. An “A” can be written as “4”, “@”, “^”, or “/-\” – among other possibilities. Words should vaguely resemble their English counterparts, but if the reader can figure it out, that’s good enough.

Leetspeak has been the subject of social science theses and linguistic journal articles. Language purists lost their monocles recently when Merriam-Webster chose w00t – the elite version of yay or woohoo – as their 2007 Word of the Year (merriam-webster.com/info/07words.htm). Even the zeroes got to stay in! W00t, ind33d.

For explanations of pwnage and why “1” shows up among exclamation points, see the Wikipedia write-up at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leet. You’ll even find links for English-to-Leetspeak translation programs.

So p0lish ur 0wn m4d sk1llz and then visit the Leetspeak version of Google at www.google.com/intl/xx-hacker/ (don’t forget the trailing slash). Lastly, to learn more while looking at pictures of cats, icanhascheezburger.com is the definitive source. You’ll thank us l@t3r, d00d.