When Humor Becomes Habit

I'm part of two guilds right now. One is a fairly hardcore raiding guild, while the other does Kara two days a week. The biggest difference for me is the casual guild is anti-leetspeak.

What started out as making fun of 1337 speakers in the hardecore guild has now turned into a pretty normal way of communicating. I say "hawt", "zomg wtfpwndbbq", and "l2p" with humor in mind, but am I really different from the actual leet kiddies at this point if it's every other sentence? It's a bit sobering to become the object of your ridicule.

It didn't even cross my mind that my online presence between friends was an issue until I joined the casual guild. Where "lawl" is funny in one, it's frowned upon in the other. I haven't tested the waters of the casual guild, but no one says anything over guild chat other than plain English. And being new, I'm still in the "please like me" phase. The last thing I want to do is turn people off to me.

The make-up of the guilds is about the same. Both consist mostly of working professionals with families and kids. Neither tolerate profanity or anything that could be offensive. I have run across a couple of immature kiddie types in the new guild, but that has to do with instance behavior, not the way they type.

I still consider the extreme leet speakers to be a bit lower on the gaming food chain, and I do have my limits. I don't use "ru" for "are you". I also don't throw in any numbers to replace letters. But I do think I've fallen for the qq duck :V and "wut?". Reading I can has cheezburger hasn't helped, either.