![]() The solar association helps make some sense of the Departure album art–the beetle in that image is one of several heavenly bodies depicted–but that still leaves a lot to be explained for the star ship beetle on the cover of Escape. It’s a symbol of the Egyptian god, Khepri, who in turn is a symbol of rebirth, the sun, and creation. Instead, let’s examine the other thing that the dung, er, scarab beetle is notable for. So that makes Steve Perry the shitty Paul McCartney? Yet, despite my best attempts at googling, I couldn’t find a more specific date for the birth of leet speak other than “the early 80’s,” which leaves open the oh-so-slight possibility that Steve Perry was teh 0r1g1n4l h4x0rs. Obviously, it’s a stretch to think that either the band Journey or the artist responsible for this album cover invented leet speak, or was even aware of its existence at the time. Though leet speak became widespread with the proliferation of online gaming, in particular, Doom, the practice originated back the early 1980’s, when its use was limited to an actually somewhat “elite” corps of hackers and other sophisticated computer users to mask illicit activity (software piracy and porn distribution) from BBS administrators. For the uninitiated, leet speak is the substitution of letters with numbers or other symbols to create a symbolic language decipherable only be a select–or shall I say elite–or shall I say “leet”–few. Overthinking It readers are probably familiar with (and at least partially annoyed by) the prevalence of “1337” or “leet” speak across the internet.
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