Back In My Day, I'm Old, Etc. Etc.

On the subway tonight, Karen asked me about the origins of leet (or 1337). This sent my mind wandering back all the way to the days of BBSs.

In my mind, the origin of l33t (a shortening and transmutation of 'elite') comes from Elite BBSs, where pirated software, plus tips and manuals on hacking and phreaking, were distributed. Back in those days, just as JPEG compression was emerging, people wanted bitchin' color graphics, but didn't have the bandwidth to include photo-quality images as part of the BBS interface (though many BBSs had jpeg libraries that you could search and download pictures from). Even a 640x480 jpeg could take more than a minute to download.

But we all still wanted sweet graphics! That's where ansi came in.

ANSI had an extended character set, including straight lines, corners, and blocks of different shadings. It allowed people to create relatively complex color graphics while still only using simple character sets that could be transmitted quickly between modems.

Aside from splash screens and the occasional menu on BBSs, ANSI art was often included with pirated software as a header for the release group's .NFO file describing what was in the .ZIP file, who the members of the group are, trash talking on other groups who didn't release the cracked game as fast, etc, which you still see sometimes today.

Many of the artists (and the users) adopted the look and feel of ANSI art and incorporated it into their handles (aka usernames) and signatures. Commonly this included substitutions of ph for f (and vice versa), numbers for letters, plus sign for a lowercase T, etc.

Anyway, on the internets of today, there are archives of much of that great ANSI art from back in the day, and a lot of the work is pretty impressive.

Go check 'em out to see how much the artists did with so little.