Zalgo is an Internet meme that started in 2004. It is about an entity known as Zalgo, which corrupts web comics so that they are dark, warped, twisted versions of themselves.
Biography[]
Zalgo, is a chaotic evil entity, commonly associated with madness, death, destruction, fear and the end of the world as we know it.
An entity living in another dimensional plane and that when it appears in ours creates chaos, its mere presence is capable of taking a person towards the vortex of madness. Simply put, Zalgo is ... horror in person. No matter how much you search on the internet, you will never find a clear answer about what Zalgo is, because there is no such thing, since Zalgo is something so terrible, that there are no words to describe it. At most, most of the time, you will find the following description:
"He waits behind the wall, in a palace of tortured glass, served by legions forged from the tears of the dead without rest, clad in armor carved from the suffering of mothers.
He is the hive mind that confounds the living, and perpetuates the torture of the damned, he takes the eyes, the window to the soul, and removes the ability to feel anything but pain, once the eyes are removed, the soul is removed, the living shell is the testimony of cruelty and eternal damnation.
He cannot be stopped, just as fear cannot be stopped, it is inseparable from reality, as it exists beyond the veil… waiting.
He waits behind the thin wall that he has built in his soul, he waits… but he has to free himself… and he has to come.
He is an eyeless abomination, with seven mouths, in his right hand he holds a dead star, and in his left hand he holds the candle, whose light is shadow and is stained with the blood of Am Dhaegar.
Six of his mouths speak in different languages, when the time comes, the seventh will sing the song that will end the Earth.
Zalgo, without a doubt, is one of the oldest and darkest urban legends that exist in the Internet world.
It became so popular that it quickly became a meme that sci-fi horror fans may love. Many believe that Zalgo is inspired by Lovecraftian mythology, however the creator himself (Goon Shmorky) has denied it. In August 2009 he explained the origin of Zalgo, in a post on the Something Awful forum. He said, and I quote:
“I like how people try to guess the origin of" Zalgo "if they don't even know where it originally came from, I'll tell you where it comes from, it comes from me, I just made it up.
Zalgo is something horrible, Zalgo is something that begins, that will begin soon, it has nothing to do with Lovecraft, I am not that nerdy as to have that kind of references.
Taking a good look at it, it's a killer meme that someone edited (no problem for me), but maybe I'll do something when they least expect it. "
Zalgo was born on July 27, 2004, in the Something Awful forums, when its creator, a user called Goon Shmorky, published a series of old cartoons, by Nancy and Archie, but these were highly modified, they were bizarre.
The characters acted erratically, insanely, constantly invoking an entity known as "Zalgo", who caused monstrous deformations in their body. Zalgo went unnoticed on the Something Awful forums, until a user named Bobby Delux, created edited versions of a web comic called, "Control-Alt-Del" creation of the controversial Tim Buckley.
This was more widespread, among users of the website "b3ta.com" who photoshopped real life comics, such as, Garfield, and Charlie Brown, among others. However, his great leap to become a meme was until after passing through the now famous website "4Chan", a place where many were amazed, and were encouraged to participate, creating new vignettes and retouching images with photoshop. The images made on this meme follow a similar pattern: any image is taken, and it is retouched to make it as chaotic and demonic as possible, the gore elements are widely welcome, the most seen details are crying black or empty eyes blood or darkness, backgrounds and atmospheres in reddish tones, and tentacles of darkness.
From now on the limit is the imagination, and there are people who give this much free rein, that not only was it enough for them to create images, but they also had the luxury of creating their own typography, a screamer-type video , called "Zalgo Rolld" that hangs around YouTube, and the slogan "He Comes", which means, he comes, or he approaches.