My friends and I do pronounce these as written: sux0rz = sucksors, but pwned is sort of like adding a ‘p’ before “owned” and then cutting the ‘o’ down to nothing. It’s not a “pwa” sound.
We specifically do it ironically to make fun of people who type them seriously, though. Same with OMGWTFBBQ.
“pwned” is pronounced like “owned” but with a P instead of an O. It should rhyme, in any event. This is easier to do in your head than to vocalize.
Suxxors, et al., I think originated as a vocal adaptation. In any event, on the handful of occassions where I’ve heard people use “sucks’zors”, or variant, in a non-mocking way, it didn’t lower my opinion of them (didn’t raise it, either).
What I think is really interesting are the vocalizations of LOL and ROFL. I’ve seen someone dead-pan “eL-Oh-eL” with a clear meaning of “you tried to be funny, and you failed” but “lole” or “roffle” seems to mean “I’m laughing, but it’s in spite of your wit, not because of it”.
Younger and younger teenagers are engaging in Oral Sex to avoid intercourse, etc..
This is not news. It’s done in groups, share-around at parties and when alone in the house with some friends. Damned young, I’d say… 
Looks teh on target to me.
There’s some more history behind this too. Back in the pre-web days, there was usenet. Usenet, if you aren’t aware, is a (generally) text-only hierarchy of message groups, essentially. It wasn’t particularly easy to use, or widespread. This had the effect of weeding out much of the idiocy all by itself.
Then came AOL.
When AOL opened the door to a graphical, easy to use verison of usenet in 1994, it all went to hell. The prototypical AOL user was BIFF. BIFF was unaware of etiquette, and didn’t care. He typed in all caps, he misspelled everything, and he used too many exclamation points. Many posts were made mocking BIFF’s style, and all those like him. Gradually, it grew from !!11!!!11 to !!11one!!1 to !!!111!!eleventyone!!1!!1! and so forth. BIFF is also called B1FF, for obvious reasons.
There are lots of silly ways to make fun of those who type in those sorts of ways. One hated shorthand is <3, representing a heart, as in “I <3 Star Trek.” Some clever soul then came up with “I less than three Star Trek.” Get it?
I refer the interested to David deLaney’s site, complete with the net.legends FAQ, and other sundry tales about the history of man’s most interesting creation.
Oh, JSexton, don’t be such a dic^H^H^H crochety old man!
–Cliffy
Color me extremely skeptical about that article. I’m very surprised that the self-reported figure is as low as 25%, but a self-reported statistic on this subject should be taken with a huge grain of salt. When I was that age, a majority of my peers (the guys, at least) were claiming to have had sex, but if you listened to the details, it quickly became evident that they were all making it up and afraid to contradict each other lest they expose their own ignorance (as any bookworm nerd who’d read encyclopaedias and anatomy books could tell). So if 25% of 13-year-olds say they’ve had sex, all that tells me is that they’re a little more honest with anonymous surveyors than they are with their peers.
Ah, JSexton, if only it were that simple. No, B1FF@BIT.NET (or was it B1FF@psuvm.psu.edu?) is far, far older than AOL’s descent onto Usenet. Witness the Jargon File entry. And the AOL invasion itself was merely the tail end of the Usenet invasion.
Actually, more like the Humvee that broke the camel’s back.
Once upon a time, in an Interweb far, far away…
Usenet (“news”) started out as a message board protocol between multiple universities. It slowly grew and as the students who used it propagated into businesses and government agencies, so did the news spool propagate. Over time it slowly changed, but it never fully outgrew its origin, and from its origins did it exibit a particular property. And that property was called…
September.
Yes, every September, the universities would get a new influx of students, many of whom would eventually wind up finding Usenet and would blunder into many newsgroups, such as soc.motss or alt.fan.cecil-adams, unaware of the standards of behavior (“netiquette”) of those groups. Everything would sort itself out in a couple of weeks, or at most a month, but it was a known occurance, with its own memes (“Is it September already?” – a common reply to a post that made little or no sense).
And in September of 1993, as in all other years, the influx occurred, and everyone tolerated (well, maybe not in alt.flame) the off-topic posts and the obnoxious signatures (except in alt.fan.warlord) and the people unable to type without using the caps lock key. Those exhibiting such behavior were referred to such resources as Emily Postnews’ guide to netiquette, or to the Internet FTP W@R3Z site, 127.0.0.1, as needed.
But then, right as such behavior was about to tail off, Boom! GEnie gave its members access to Usenet. And people complained that September was lasting overlong. But things began to get better until Boom! Compu$erve gave its users access to Usenet. And the netizens languished in the extended September, holding tight to the belief that this, too, shall pass. And then, only then, did AOL, driven by its competitors to open the floodgates and give its users access to the Internet.
Thus began The September that Never Ended.
Wikipedia gets it mostly right: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September
Tell us another story, grampa, we’re not sleepy…
Teh 1 43007 0w u l0s7 |0 4|2|V|!!!1111twentyfive
!!!one hundred and eleven trillion one hundred and eleven billion one hundred and eleven million one hundred and eleven thousand one hundred and eleven!!!
I can’t speak for anyone else, but in my head I pronouce suxx0rs as sucksors, and pwned as pawned.
You’'re assuming they ever actually talk to other human beings in real life…
Yeah, I know I oversimplified, and misremembered a bit of BIFF’s origins. Still, the point holds true. Damn, I miss those days.
I wonder how many current Dopers used to post on alt.fan.cecil-adams? I was a constant lurker back in the early nineties, but I rarely posted. People think there is a clique here? Ha! Nothing at all, compared to afca.
And Cliffy, I’m thirty. I’m not OLD. [/python]
Omg B7!