Having been a computer gamer I was very fond of the 'birth' of internet language through the varying 'minority' groups (quake, counter-strike, etc)
I played counter-strike regularly back in 02-06? I noticed the trend change within different games. Quake III and Quakeworld for example tended to have a much more mature community so I didn't really notice so much jargon,
CS featured younger gamers so go figure. I stopped playing games for about one year from 03-04 as I was in my final year of high school, but when I got back into it it was drastically different, the people, the language everything about it evolved.
Starcraft hasn't changed much from when I played it (98-00) till now. Perhaps that is due to the limited dialogue in SC, e.g. A game would start with a "from?" and that was pretty much it, there was some communication in game but rarely.
WoW'ers were the worst, once they came into the game the whole thing just backfired and there was 100 times more rubbish floating around. I haven't played WoW but I hear lots of stories and explanations on certain terms from my friends who do play it.
2 guys from teamliquid.net (the international starcraft community) are actually doing some research on starcraft internet talk. Being the most diverse game out there with perhaps the maturest of all gamers they are checking out net-speak of players from different countries. I'm interested in seeing what the outcome is.
I don't see why there's the need for all this elitist hate on internet language, the study of it from a linguistic perspective can tell you so much. We are witnessing the birth of a new language in its entirety, sure you have American street speak (no not Ebonics) which I know a little of by listening to some underground hiphop tracks but that is only really limited to the bronx and those areas I think. Where as internet English is everywhere and is what the new generation of kids will all be familiar with. I'm sure in 10/20 years time linguists will be doing lots of research on this.
Japanese internet talk seems interesting from what I can makeout/understand from the above couple of posts, Korean e-talk is cool too
I'm conscious of who I type to when I sms. If I know that a person has English as a second language and is not a computer geek then I do not abbreviate anything.