Pwn Your Mistakes

Although Wikipedia offers variations on the pronunciation, I have it on good authority*:

pwned is pronounced owned

like the word it was meant to be in the first place.
Or, if the defeat is particularly impressive: owned with a capital P.

The increasing mainstream usage of pwn and its offshoots would once have been labeled a massive spellcheck fail by every proofreader and their dictionary. But the typo was picked up and repeated, owned in a more traditional sense and then shared, and shared again.

The ironic success of this small mistake is just one of many reasons to own our missteps, consider them out of context, and wonder:

what if?

What if I had fun with this?
What if this could be useful?
What if this is an answer to a different question?


*Yes, Six. And yes, his authority comes from large chunks of time spent gaming.

image source