Why Pwned?

PvP started something last week where Francis Ottoman was laying into Brent about how much better Francis was at Halo 2 and how he own’s Brent’s butt. “I own you!” or “You’re owned” is slang for being so much better than someone else, and thus Brent is “owned”. Then Francis wore an awareness bracelet, raising awareness about the plight of the “owned”.

Then Scott rolls out a new product: the awareness bracelet. (Yeah, this is pretty manipulative. Reminds me of when Gene Roddenberry wrote the episode about the IDIC pin in hopes that it would sell the crappy pins he’d already bought so he could profiteer from the slavish Trek fans.)

But here’s the thing: The bracelet says “Support the Pwned”. And that’s not one of Scott’s usual typos, apparently, that’s what he wants the bracelet to say.

What’s Pwned? I assume this is one of those stupid childish gamer slang things like L33T SKILZ which I have never understood. (How hard is it to spell elite?) But I’d like to know why it’s Pwned.

UPDATE: I’d like to thank Brian Hogg for linking me to the Urban Dictionary entry. Short version: It originates from a misspelling in a game, which was then repeated by gamers.