Rheimos thanks you as you hand over 79 bodies of rats. "Now, I can feed the hungry beasts before they get cranky! Take these 1337 sovereigns for your service!"

Priceless.

Thank you for the 1337th post on the random occurance of the number 1337

Hence the title and subtitle of the thread.

*stares for a few minutes* Nope.. not funny.. I must be missing something..

It's the .. eh .. *points* ... oh nevermind. Had to be there..

1337, Kaileigh, 1337. That's the funny part. *jig*

It's 31337!

*blank stare*

There's a form of 'internet slang' which replaces letters with numbers. '1337' translates to 'leet', which is an abbreviation of 'elite' (hence Jalain saying '31337').

And now it's no longer funny.

So 1337 h4x0r = elite hacker?

*rolls eyes*

It comes from elite.

Nerds turned it into numbers and symbols, because they thought they were too smart for everyone else (just like MUDders think we have better imaginations than anyone else ).

3l337= Elite. Eliteness being cool, or whatnot.

l337, or 1337 is "leet", which is the shortened version.

In this case, it would be appropriate to say to you, "j00r not l337, n00b."

Richter bows to you- the lesson in l337 is finished.

Actually, that practice goes back into the dim and murky past of BBS communication, fidonet and similar forums. Essentially, those writing illicit material would shift characters to similar-looking letters and numbers so as to throw off methods that might be used to seek out the questionable material. The idea was that humans would be able to read the material well enough, but those using a search or filter program to look for 'bomb' (for example) would be fooled by a search if it was instead spelled 'b0mb'. A human reader, once accustomed to the occasional hiccup in spelling, would gloss over such things. The programs of the time weren't sophisticated enough to catch the difference, in theory. They were wrong, but that's neither here nor there.

I remember when it was considered an acceptable practice of serious writers to post in 'leet-speak', if only to ward off big brother. That would be circa 300 baud, though. Yeah, a while ago.

I never would have known about this stuff if I never played Kingdom of Loathing and helped the Baron Rof L'm Fao.. I love that name

What's even better is summoning the 1337 h4ax0r. I sat there for nigh on a half an hour and there's a few sentences that I still counldn't decipher.... but all the gewgage he gives you is nice. Wow... I've made what, three posts, and every one of them I've written about Kingdom of Loathing...... *cough*....... HEY WHAT'S THAT OVER THERE? *runs away like a disco bandit in the dead of night*

*sniffle* I am just too old for this.

Leetspeak was also a very simple method of password encryption, back when dinosaurs ruled the earth.

Ah, those were the days. Half of my passwords still have leetspeak in them, to some extent.

Even if you are, still not funny.

*hunts down and kills people for 1337 offences*

I still have l337 passwords sometimes, for my work. I forget, call the IT guys, they're like, ok, your password is... wtf. R363nc3 15 7h3 |337 1n5ur4nc3 c0mp4ny.