Jeff K.
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Jeff K. is one of several fictitious update writers for the popular humor website Something Awful. Created by Something Awful founder Rich "Lowtax" Kyanka, Jeff K. is a parody of teenage Internet users, particularly script kiddies and online game players.
Jeff K. once claimed to be a "l33t hax0r" (an "elite cracker" in leetspeak) but is now a "computar consultant becuase hax0ring si illegal" (sic). Jeff K.'s writing style is characterized by generally horrible spelling, flipping the positions of letters in words, and alternately writing in all caps and all lowercase (contrary to popular perception, he did not generally replace letters with numbers as in leetspeak). He is also known for combining words to create insults such as "clownboat" and "asshat", and bad web design skills. He has coined several phrases that have entered more widespread usage in other Internet communities, most notably the use of teh*, as in the phrase "teh funney" (now often misspelled further as "teh funnay"). Although the term "asshat" predates Jeff K., he certainly popularized it, and it has begun appearing as pejorative slang in other online forums like fark.com.
Other sites sometimes join in on the joke, and pretend to be hacked by Jeff K. The features on Jeff K.'s site are a mixture of game and film reviews, previews and interviews. Jeff K. also draws "Wacky Fun Computar Comics", which occasionally imitate popular computer- and gaming-oriented web comics such as Penny Arcade and User Friendly. Also constantly mentioned on the website is Jeff K.'s best friend, Jerry, who (according to Jeff K.) is a "fagot" and a "fat littal boy".
As of 2005, Kyanka has all but abandoned the character, since essentially no one still seriously writes the way Jeff K. does (if they ever did) and the widespread imitation of Jeff K. and parodying of the "leet" stereotype by the Internet at large has made the humor too overused; in Kyanka's own words, "the Internet has murdered him". [1] (http://www.shacknews.com/ja.zz?id=9502687) However, Jeff K. did briefly come out of his "retirement" for an October, 2004 review of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.
The name "Jeff K." might be a reference to Sun software engineer Jeff Kesselman, who is notorious for making frequent spelling mistakes, such as "teh" and similar, in newsgroup and forum posts. Or perhaps it is a reference to JFK; truth be told, we may never be certain.
Trivia
- "JeffK" was not the first to coin the term "teh".
See also: B1FF Leet Teh Asshat
External link
- Jeff K.'s homepage (http://www.somethingawful.com/jeffk/)