Back in 2015 when I was still a relative newbie blogger I received a notification from WordPress for having received 1337 likes.
At the time I had no idea what the significance of such a random number was so I posted about it. My friend and fellow blogger Dennis was quick to explain that there is an internet language known as “leetspeak” and that 1337 refers to the word “leet”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leet
Leetspeak goes right back to hacker communities using bulletin boards in the 1980s and is well known amongst gamers too. I am not familiar with the TV series “Mr. Robot” but apparently this show used Leetspeak to name each episode.
https://www.lifewire.com/what-is-1337-leet-4089946
Today 1337 popped up again. This time 1337 posts. The WordPress developers are still enjoying their little in-joke but now I’ve been around long enough that I’m in on it too.
Our Other Blog: Two Sisters and Two Points of View 
We both have endurance 🙂 Maybe because we don’t stress ourselves with any blogging schedules or particular niches. That’s at least my reason. Do you feel the same? I am always happy when I see you did another milestone with your blog, because so many bloggers come and go.
Yes, leetspeak was very popular in the gaming communities. And partly still is, either in chats or with player names. But older gamers find it cheesy and are now back on a trend to use real surnames like “Dennis” if possible, or something related to the life or location like in my case “Northern Creature” (in German). German is now very popular here, because English names were overused by us… and it’s not as cool anymore to show that you can speak English as a German, or whoever. That’s cool, because you now discover interesting French names in games and what not. Excessive use of acronyms is however still a big thing, even in voice chat 😀
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As a gaming teen back then, my names were as Leet as they could get. I always thought I could impress my gaming friends with my hacker names. And they probably thought the same, because they did it too 🙂 Everyone did 🙂
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Eventually we grow out of needing to impress our friends. I guess English names have lost their novelty as probably many more Europeans speak English now and British people are living and working all over Europe, at least until Brexit anyway.
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I think so. I just can speak for people around me, but the younger generations all speak English very well. I think people older than us, like our parents and grandparents were and still are pretty bad in English. I think the internet made it easy to get into the English language. But for the internet generations, it’s like you said… you can’t impress a lot of people with English skills anymore. Those who are younger than my generation, they’re probably even better than we are. That’s probably the reason why the English pseudonyms lost novelty.
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Yes I think we have lasted because we don’t get stressed over keeping to a schedule. I do try and have a bit of order in the doll blog, at least a post every Friday and yes I do feel more guilt when I don’t post there but we all have lives outside the computer and sometimes you’d just rather do something else. Six years is pretty good, most TV series don’t last that long.
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That’s it. I see it like you. As much as I like my blog, there are other things going on. And I know myself very well… if I would ever force myself to do a task, it would turn from hobby to task. And I don’t like tasks. There are also times where you feel that you repeat yourself… I sometimes wait a bit until this goes away, or until I have something to share, or to say. I really don’t like the type of blogging where I need to force myself, I prefer it if things just flow on the keyboard because I’m in the mood for it. Haha, the TV series comparison is awesome! 🙂
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I’ve been a bit short of ideas lately, not going out and about much so little chance to take photos but when I received the election information in the post I had the idea to write something about that and within hours had two posts just from that one idea. I’m saving the second one for later, people don’t want to read about politics all the time.
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