Still a better love story than Twilight.

The interesting thing is that l337-speak - which proceeded LolCats and I guess would be "zeroth generation internet speak" in your formulation - was created for a specific, functional purpose: defeating early text recognition software, thus requiring administrators and government-types to shut down exchanges of "w4r3z" and "pr0n" and exploits of "h4xing" rather than relying on software flagging to do it for them. And of course, once "hackers" became a sort of lionized subcultural figure...yeah. (I thought this was pretty well-known, but I hadn't seen anyone mention it). LolCat and Doge seem much more...organic?