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This is an angzarr, otherwise known as Right
Angle With Downwards Zigzag Arrow.

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That nickname is actually a clever reference
to how it’s a right angle with a downwards

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zigzag arrow.

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But here’s a question: what does this symbol
mean?

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A bad day on the stock market?

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Lightning hitting somebody’s elbow?

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A snake slithering off of a chair because
you just asked it a really offensive question

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about snakes and ruined your whole dinner
with this snake?

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Well, your guess is as good as mine because
it turns out… nobody knows.

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Okay, okay, I know that doesn’t sound exciting;
there are lots of symbols or combinations

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of symbols that don’t seem to have any discernible
meaning.

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But the angzarr is a little different—it’s
officially part of unicode.

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This weird little guy has been programmed
into nearly every single computer on Earth

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for decades, having been updated and carried
over countless different times.

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But if no one seems to know what it means,
then that raises a kind of strange question:

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why is this symbol in your computer, and who
put it there?

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Well, before I talk about how this character
probably ended up in unicode, I need to explain

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how unicode works in the first place.

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Let’s say you’ve just opened a text file
on your computer—and for the sake of simplicity,

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let’s say it’s the Half as Interesting
script I need to finish by the end of today,

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which currently just contains the letter “L.”
You see, that file doesn’t actually contain

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the L itself—the arrangement of pixels you
see when you look at an L on your screen—that

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would make text files way bigger than they
had to be.

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Instead, this text file contains a very short
code that tells your computer to display the

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L that’s sitting somewhere in its hard drive.

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Now, that seems simple enough, but this system
used to have some pretty major problems; up

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until the 1990s, computers made by different
companies, running different operating systems,

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or displaying different languages had a lot
of trouble reading each others’ files.

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If the codes in one computer’s database
corresponded to different characters, then

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the text typed on one computer would show
up as something completely different on the

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other.

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If you sent an email to your wife in Norway
that said “I love you, my Norwegian wife,”

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she might open it and see a file that says
“I am wanted for manslaughter.

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Also I do not love you anymore and I want
a divorce.

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Do not contact me or ask me any further questions
about this email.”

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Could that have actually happened?

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No, not really, but it gets the basic idea
across and that’s what’s important.

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This problem was eventually solved with the
invention of Unicode: a totally universal

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character encoding system that encompassed
pretty much every single writing system known

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to man—both old and new—with every extra
symbol and bit of punctuation that might conceivably

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need to be used on a computer.

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This collection of 144,697 different characters
is shared by every modern computer, and that

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collection includes this thing: the angzarr.

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So, okay: yadda yadda yadda, boring nerd talk,
every computer on Earth shares a common collection

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of symbols so that no one accidentally divorces
their Norwegian wife.

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But how, exactly, did the angzarr end up in
this collection if no one knows what it means?

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Like, this is literally the most comprehensive
and strictly maintained writing system in

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human history.

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It has its own consortium with members from
Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and IBM

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whose whole purpose is just to vote on stuff
like whether…

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Upper Right Block Diagonal Lower Middle Left
To Lower Right should be a real character.

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Apparently it is, and it has a whole reason
to exist.

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So how did this thing slip through the cracks?

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Well, like most stupid questions, there was
exactly one man on the internet who was wondering

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the same thing and did a crazy amount of research
to figure out the answer.

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Good unpaid labor, Jonathan!

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Now, according to this guy’s research, the
angzarr was first proposed, along with a whole

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bunch of other characters, in this document.

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This whole thing was the work of an organization
called the STIX Project, which was formed

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to regulate mathematical symbols… but the
woman who actually documented the angzarr

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for them weighed in to say that even she had
no idea what it meant when she put it in their

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registry.

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She got the symbol from a technical report
put out by the International Standards Organization,

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which I can’t actually show you because
I’m not about to waste 198 of my precious

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Swiss Francs on two seconds of this video.

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It’s not entirely clear where the ISO originally
sourced the symbol, but they seemingly pulled

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a lot of their characters from the now-totally-defunct
Association for Font Information Interchange,

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who seemingly just let anyone register a symbol
for five bucks.

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So…

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there’s pretty much no way of knowing why
this symbol exists, unless you’re the one

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cryptic dork who paid five bucks in the early
1990s to register “Right Angle With Downwards

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Zigzag Arrow” with the AFII.

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If that happens to be you… please don’t
comment below with the answer because that

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would ruin this whole video.

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Of course, there are some pretty good theories
as to what the angzarr might actually mean.

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Or at least, kind of mean.

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Electricians have pointed out, for example,
that the downwards zigzag arrow is used in

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other electrical symbols to indicate a short
circuit.

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Some mathematicians have noted that in their
field, the downwards zigzag arrow means that

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there’s a logical contradiction of some
kind, and other mathematicians have speculated

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that it might refer to a graph whose Y axis
continues below its X axis.

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Certain annoying people with no particular
expertise at all have observed that the angzarr

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looks a whole lot like this ancient chaos
magic sigil, even though this ancient chaos

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magic sigil was invented in 2004 and didn’t
even exist when the angzarr was added to unicode.

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But really, the beauty of this symbol is that
it has no meaning—it’s an empty vessel

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for us to create our own meanings.

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You can use it for anything.

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It could be an enticing pickup line on a dating
app, or a cryptic way of telling your landlord

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that you aren’t gonna pay rent that month.

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00:04:36,320 --> 00:04:40,220
Maybe, you could even use it as a way of saying,
“Hey, Sam, good video, I enjoyed watching

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that video, and I’m even going to sit through
the whole ad at the end just to be nice.”

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In exchange for your kindness, I’m going
to let you in on a little secret: learning

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hard things is hard, and doing hard things
is hard, except when it isn’t.

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based on teaching you small, intuitive principles

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That way you start a course by using an artificial
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