Netspeak question

[Nora Renka]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "davewitley" 
<dfrankiswork at n...> wrote:
> Where does the -0r ending come from, e.g. instead of saying 'this 
> sucks', you say 'sux0r' or 'suxx0r'?
> 
> It seems to go against the trend of what might charitably be called 
> bandwidth-enforced brevity, e.g. 'u' for 'you', '4' for 'for', etc.
> 
> David

Well, also, back in the day when the Internet was largely comprised 
of BBSes and Usenet, there was a little subculture of 'r0dentz', 
somewhat akin to the phreaks who used to enjoy hacking the phone 
lines.  (The legendary 'Captain Crunch' is probably the best known).  
That type of obnoxious alphanumeric substitution was rampant amongst 
them, and has been taken up by the 1337 kiddies and warez fiends...I 
do suspect it has something to do with programming shorthand and 
commands like that...

-Nora (who has an odd fondness for all kinds of strange Internet 
culture...especially alt.fan.warlord)