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This remarkable book was found in the Garden of local Nerd extraordinaire; Nick Hunt-Davis.

I was just digging around in the dirt, as I sometimes do, when I struck something solid. A strange metal tube… As I lifted it out of the dirt, to further inspect it, it popped open! Revealing The Leet Manifesto!

A little background on The Leet Manifesto:

The front cover of The Leet Manifesto.

This peculiar passage at the back of the book, leads us to believe that The Leet Manifesto comes from the year 2309 or later:

From The Leet Manifesto, Page 10

We hope you have had a pleasant time reading The Leet Manifesto. If you are native to the year 2309 or later DO NOT READ THE FOLLOWING PASSAGE!

We of course, read on…

If you are reading this and are not native to the year 2309 or later, please ignore all references to apparent future oppression, it’s just a joke. We swear! This is a humorous novelty manual. Nothing more. To receive a free internal combustion motor vehicle, destroy this book and never speak of it again!

Perhaps lost in a future Time Travel experiment? Maybe even sent back to us intentionally by our future selves as a warning?! We hope to answer these question, and we could use your help.

This astonishing find, offers a window into the world of tomorrow. It holds many clues as to our future as a race. It also does a fairly good job of teaching the language Leet Speak. We encourage you to read on. Please inform us of anything interesting and subtle you picked up that we might have missed.

As we continue to study The Leet Manifesto, we hope to uncover more about our future and its fascinating inhabitants. Check back often for updates.

Please be warned, the writers of The Leet Manifesto, appear to have a rather skewed view of the world, their patronising tone might offend sensitive readers.

The Leet Manifesto – 2309

Leet? What’s that you might ask? We’d expect nothing less of a n00b such as yourself. Fear not dear little n00b. We are here to help.

Included in the manifesto, is all you’ll need to learn and understand the remarkably well thought out language leet speak.

The purpose of this manuscript is to educate.  Don’t fret! We understand that the term educate has negative connotations for you lowbrow n00bs. Rest assured, we have taken the necessary steps to ensure that this learning experience is as painless for you as possible.

As you may or may not be aware, your masters (we the geeks) communicate in a far superior means to your petty English. Some of our kindred even argued and trolled that Jocks don’t have the cognitive capacity to learn it. However, after one too many incorrect fast food orders we will try. We call this language leet speak. It may sound new and uber modern to you, but we the geeks have been using leet speak for years. Leet Speak even played a significant role in our subtle global takeover back in 2009. Thanks goodness…

What is leet speak?

Leet or Eleet  (sometimes rendered l33t, 1337 or 31337), also known as Leetspeak or Leetzorz (1337Z0l2Z), is an alphabet used primarily on the Internet, which uses various characters or combinations of characters to replace traditional letters. The term is derived from the word “elite”, and the usage it describes is a specialized form of symbolic writing. Different dialects of leet exist.

Simply put, leet is a substitution cipher.  Will they get this?

HISTORY

Leet originated within bulletin board systems (an early version of the internet) in the 1980s, where having “elite” status on a BBS (Bulletin Board System) allowed a user access to exclusive file folders, games, and special chat rooms. It was here that geeks first started communicating and planning without the petty bothers of physical social interactions. For the first time we were able to share information without having to open our pale lipped mouths.

However, the jocks in charge at the time were able to search through our bulletin boards and identify threatening topics. Thankfully, we were smarter.

Leet speak was born!

Hackerzorz

The brighter amongst our ranks, the early day (hackers) were the fist to implement leet speak. As Jock word filters could search for words considered threatening we needed a way to plot without the use of threatening language.

Leet speak provided us with a full proof method.

Substitution Ciphers

Suddenly hazardous terms like “free thought” became “ƒ (r)33 + #o(_)9+”

Lets take a closer look:

F   r   e   e   t   h   o   u   g   h   t

ƒ  (r)  3   3   +  #   o  (_) 9   #   +

I can type leet!

1 <@n +yp3 7334

It all get’s very technical and to be honest quite boring for a while here in… Let’s skip ahead to the good bits…

Page 7 of The Leet Manifesto:

Did you know that LOL was invented? Among the earliest of gaming terms is the now popular LOL.

For as long as geeks have roamed the earth, there has been gaming, and for as long as there has been gaming, there has been gaming jargon. Gaming jargon came along at around the same time leet speak was created. Early geeks, with their superior brains, discovered that the use of acronyms and specialised jargon could save much valuable time. Time that would otherwise be spent typing long n00b speak, instead of fragging n00bs.

Did you know that the word LOL was actually INVENTED! Unbvelievable as it seems, we now know this to be true. It wasn’t always a natural response to delight or humour.

LOL of course means Laughing Out Loud, we all know that, but do you know what Laughing means? We thought not. Laughing (verb), or Laugh (noun) was an involuntary reaction that lay in our vocabulary where lol todays lies. Laughing was a word used to describe the sound made in place of lol. A strange simian sound it was. Similar to the sound heard often from the Chimopanzee Tribes of Africa. Further evidence that we too once lived in little mud huts.

Other popular gaming terms include the word w00t. The first leet speak word ever to be included in the Merrium Webster dictionary way back in 2007. Not much is known about this old word. The ancient wiki archives offer some clues.

From the wiki archives:

…of uncertain origin; most likely from the 1993 Dance catch-phrase WHOOT, There it is! Other theories suggest that it is a blend of Wow and Loot (as might be exclaimed during a role playing game) An acronym for We Owned the Other Team, a corruption of Root (As might be exclaimed by a hacker on obtaining root access), or a derivative of Scots Hoot!

There is still a great wealth of information hidden in the pages of The Leet Manifesto. Our team of esteemed archeologists and scientists are working tirelessly to get as much out of these pages as we can. If you feel any of this Leet Speak nonsense makes any sense to you, please notify us in the comments.

We hope to unveil the book in it’s entirety as soon as we are done with the translations and restoration.

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