Eli5: why does ̸̢̛̞̱͓Z̵̪͙͊̎̌ä̷̳͕̋̚l̵͉̙̓͘ͅg̴̫̠̑̈͜o̴̻͛ text look the way it does?
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UTF-8(the most common used way to encode text in ones and zeroes) has something called modifiers, it makes it possible to combine two characters into one letter. This is used to produce stuff like è from an “e” and the modifier “`” or ü from u and a modifier for two dotts on top.
Zalgo text exploits this feature by just adding as many random modifiers to any letter as it can, so that the text starts to look weird.
It includes combining diacritic marks. They are intended to overlap with the preceding character to produce one with a symbol above or below. Traditionally symbols like “ä” were complete letters of their own. But at some point it was realized that foreign languages would need too many combinations, and separate letters were created instead for “a” and combining diaeresis ̈̈̈̈̈.
Text systems of computers differ in how many of these relatively new symbols they will overlap and how precisely. Text coming from the Macintosh platform is often decomposed into these character pairs.
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Some languages use accent marks. Think like ö, but loads of languages around the world with loads of accent marks. Instead of having every combination of every letter and every possible accent saved in a font, UTF (the modern standard for how computers store text) lets you add accents on top of existing letters.
Some accents go below text as well as above so they’re in there too.
Some languages have stacked accents, so instead of having all the possible stacked accents in a font UTF lets you just put one after the other and stacks them.
If you go a bit crazy with it and put loads of stacked accents on every letter of a word it becomes a cursed mess that spills out across multiple lines.
Some letters can be changed with accents. For example: e can be è, é, ê, ë, etc.
How do computers store letters with accents?
There are two main ways.
1. Store a copy of every letter with every accent combination. Or
2. Store the letters and accents separately.
Because there are lots of different letters and lots of different accents, it is easier for computers to store them separately. Think of letters as little Lego figures, and accents as their hats. You have a box of figures, a box of hats, and you can combine them however you like.
What happens if you put too many hats on your Lego figure? It starts to look a bit silly.
With computer text, you can take an English letter, and then add as many accents as you want to it. Some accents go at the top like É. Some go at the bottom like Ç.
Just like a tower of Lego, it is possible to keep adding accents on to letters. And that gives you the “Zalgo” effect.
Why do the accents stack up on each other to make giant columns of c̶̡̧̪͉̖̝͙͔̱̹̝̤͍͊͐̿͛̍͠ͅͅr̷̻̫͉̥͑̄͑̒̇͊͠a̶̢̛͍̪̻̳̩̅͜z̵̧̩̬̭̱̱̲̺̱̟̟͔̠̰̰͚̭̓̒y̴͍̞̮̥̗̩͙̼̘̻͉̜̹͈̭̥͐̒͊̀̽̎̓̐̿̒͆̈́͗͝ͅ instead of just overlapping in their normal places right above or below the letter?
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My question is how does one go about producing such text?
Because He Who Waits Behind The Wall has power to make everything decay…..He is decay itself……He is Coming …..ZALGO
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