WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.600 Welcome to the deep dive. We're really thrilled 00:00:03.600 --> 00:00:05.259 to have you with us today. Yeah, we've got a 00:00:05.259 --> 00:00:07.519 really fun topic lined up. Have you ever been 00:00:07.519 --> 00:00:10.720 so completely utterly frustrated that you just 00:00:10.720 --> 00:00:13.439 angrily mash the top row of your keyboard? Oh, 00:00:13.640 --> 00:00:16.199 I mean, you know the exact feeling. Right. You're 00:00:16.199 --> 00:00:18.420 typing out a text message or maybe firing off 00:00:18.420 --> 00:00:21.059 a social media post, and you just hammer out 00:00:21.059 --> 00:00:24.760 an at sign, a hashtag, a dollar sign. A percent 00:00:24.760 --> 00:00:27.559 sign, maybe an ampersand. Exactly. And a heavy 00:00:27.559 --> 00:00:29.920 exclamation point at the end. You hit send and 00:00:29.920 --> 00:00:32.420 you just feel this tiny rush of satisfaction. 00:00:32.659 --> 00:00:34.799 I do. It feels great. But without even realizing 00:00:34.799 --> 00:00:37.060 it, in that moment of digital rage, you were 00:00:37.060 --> 00:00:41.100 actually utilizing a highly specific 120 -year 00:00:41.100 --> 00:00:43.679 -old typographical tool. It's crazy because we 00:00:43.679 --> 00:00:47.299 rely on this this structured visual language 00:00:47.299 --> 00:00:50.100 so heavily in our daily communication, but we 00:00:50.100 --> 00:00:52.259 don't even process what we're doing. No, not 00:00:52.259 --> 00:00:54.560 at all. We just operate on this collective assumption 00:00:54.560 --> 00:00:58.640 that a cluster of unpronounceable punctuation 00:00:58.640 --> 00:01:01.759 marks inherently equals a curse word. So today, 00:01:01.899 --> 00:01:04.959 we are pulling from a fascinating stack of sources, 00:01:05.459 --> 00:01:07.500 primarily anchored by a really comprehensive 00:01:07.500 --> 00:01:11.819 Wikipedia article, to explore this bizarre linguistic 00:01:11.819 --> 00:01:14.680 and visual phenomenon. Yeah, such a weird little 00:01:14.569 --> 00:01:17.140 corner of history. The mission for this deep 00:01:17.140 --> 00:01:19.840 dive is to figure out exactly how human beings 00:01:19.840 --> 00:01:22.439 have creatively solved the problem of, well, 00:01:22.739 --> 00:01:25.079 polite swearing in print for over a century. 00:01:25.180 --> 00:01:27.599 Right. We're going to trace this strange concept 00:01:27.599 --> 00:01:30.700 all the way from vintage ink -stained comic strips 00:01:30.700 --> 00:01:33.659 right up to the modern smartphone sitting in 00:01:33.659 --> 00:01:35.760 your pocket right now. It's quite a journey. 00:01:35.920 --> 00:01:38.900 OK, let's unpack this. What exactly is this typographic 00:01:38.900 --> 00:01:42.120 trick even called? So it's called Agrawlix. Agrawlix. 00:01:42.219 --> 00:01:45.680 Yeah, spelled G -R -A -W -L -I -X. though sometimes 00:01:45.680 --> 00:01:47.799 you'll also see it referred to as an obscenicon. 00:01:48.079 --> 00:01:51.159 I love that. Obscenicon sounds like a convention 00:01:51.159 --> 00:01:53.579 for supervillains or something. It really does. 00:01:53.939 --> 00:01:56.000 But fundamentally, agraulics is just the use 00:01:56.000 --> 00:01:59.000 of typographical symbols to replace profanity. 00:01:59.200 --> 00:02:01.560 Usually those unpronounceable characters you 00:02:01.560 --> 00:02:03.579 find on the shift number row of a keyboard, right? 00:02:03.939 --> 00:02:05.780 Exactly. And the sources point out that these 00:02:05.780 --> 00:02:07.760 aren't always just random jumbles of symbols 00:02:07.760 --> 00:02:10.069 either. Oh, really? Yeah, sometimes there's this 00:02:10.069 --> 00:02:13.889 deliberate typographical mimicry happening, like 00:02:13.889 --> 00:02:16.729 a writer might use a dollar sign because it physically 00:02:16.729 --> 00:02:19.270 mimics the curvature of the letter S. Oh, sure. 00:02:19.389 --> 00:02:21.430 Or they might use an ad sign because it visually 00:02:21.430 --> 00:02:24.750 resembles a lowercase a trapped inside a circle. 00:02:25.069 --> 00:02:27.909 That makes total sense. It's been described as 00:02:27.909 --> 00:02:30.949 the graphical equivalent of a bleep sensor on 00:02:30.949 --> 00:02:33.150 television or radio. Yeah, that comparison to 00:02:33.150 --> 00:02:36.449 an auditory bleep is it's usually the easiest 00:02:36.449 --> 00:02:38.810 way to conceptualize what the symbols are actually 00:02:38.810 --> 00:02:41.090 doing on the page. But wait, I want to push back 00:02:41.090 --> 00:02:42.550 on that a little bit. If we break that down, 00:02:42.810 --> 00:02:45.889 a television bleep is a literal auditory mask, 00:02:46.050 --> 00:02:48.349 right? Right. It literally drowns out the sound 00:02:48.349 --> 00:02:50.610 wave so your ear physically cannot process the 00:02:50.610 --> 00:02:54.080 spoken word. Sure. But the growlix is supposed 00:02:54.080 --> 00:02:57.219 to be a typographic mass. And honestly, it is 00:02:57.219 --> 00:03:00.400 a terrible sensor. How do you mean? Well, I mean, 00:03:00.460 --> 00:03:02.919 if I'm reading a sentence and I see a word that 00:03:02.919 --> 00:03:06.099 starts with S, ends in T, and has a dollar sign 00:03:06.099 --> 00:03:08.740 and a hashtag wedged in the middle, my brain 00:03:08.740 --> 00:03:11.580 doesn't stop. No, of course not. I don't pause 00:03:11.580 --> 00:03:13.800 in confusion. I immediately fill in the blank 00:03:13.800 --> 00:03:15.620 and read the curse word in my head anyway. It 00:03:15.620 --> 00:03:17.840 hasn't censored anything at all. What's fascinating 00:03:17.840 --> 00:03:20.699 here is that the growlix doesn't actually exist. 00:03:21.099 --> 00:03:23.419 to erase the word from your mind. That doesn't. 00:03:23.500 --> 00:03:25.780 No, that's a fundamental misunderstanding of 00:03:25.780 --> 00:03:29.639 its utility. It actually exists to fulfill a 00:03:29.639 --> 00:03:32.340 shared social contract between the creator and 00:03:32.340 --> 00:03:34.719 the audience. OK, I am going to need you to elaborate 00:03:34.719 --> 00:03:37.659 on that. What kind of social contract are we 00:03:37.659 --> 00:03:40.060 signing when we read a comic strip? Well, think 00:03:40.060 --> 00:03:42.280 about the psychological difference between the 00:03:42.280 --> 00:03:45.659 intent of a word and its visual offense. OK. 00:03:46.159 --> 00:03:49.080 If a character in a comic strip hits their thumb 00:03:49.080 --> 00:03:52.599 with a hammer, The creator is obligated to communicate 00:03:52.599 --> 00:03:55.580 that this character is in sudden intense pain, 00:03:55.580 --> 00:03:58.039 right? They're frustrated. Exactly. They're expressing 00:03:58.039 --> 00:04:02.139 a very raw human emotion The writer needs to 00:04:02.139 --> 00:04:04.479 show the intent of the profanity because that 00:04:04.479 --> 00:04:07.460 intent is necessary for the story to work However, 00:04:08.219 --> 00:04:10.780 depending on the publication standards, especially, 00:04:11.300 --> 00:04:13.280 you know in a newspaper that sits on a family 00:04:13.280 --> 00:04:16.980 breakfast table They simply cannot subject the 00:04:16.980 --> 00:04:20.209 reader to the visual offense of printing the 00:04:20.209 --> 00:04:23.529 actual vulgarity. So the publication is just 00:04:23.529 --> 00:04:26.730 trying to maintain this facade of formal decency. 00:04:27.089 --> 00:04:30.189 Precisely. And the Grawlix successfully threads 00:04:30.189 --> 00:04:32.970 that needle perfectly. Because you get the emotion 00:04:32.970 --> 00:04:35.930 without the bad word. Exactly. You, the reader, 00:04:36.009 --> 00:04:38.670 get the raw emotion. You understand the context 00:04:38.670 --> 00:04:41.329 perfectly. You even supply the vulgar word in 00:04:41.329 --> 00:04:43.720 your own mind, just like you said. Right. But 00:04:43.720 --> 00:04:45.779 because the publisher didn't actually print the 00:04:45.779 --> 00:04:47.819 letters, they haven't crossed the boundary of 00:04:47.819 --> 00:04:50.399 formal decency. It's this mutually agreed upon 00:04:50.399 --> 00:04:52.279 fiction. We both know what the character said, 00:04:52.339 --> 00:04:54.480 but we just agree to pretend that we didn't see 00:04:54.480 --> 00:04:57.540 it. Exactly. It is essentially polite rage. Polite 00:04:57.540 --> 00:04:59.740 rage. I like that. The publisher gets to keep 00:04:59.740 --> 00:05:02.399 their hands clean, and the reader gets the emotional 00:05:02.399 --> 00:05:05.399 payoff of the joke. But this visual trick relies 00:05:05.399 --> 00:05:07.459 heavily on that shared understanding between 00:05:07.459 --> 00:05:09.300 the artist and the reader. Right. It had to start 00:05:09.300 --> 00:05:11.889 somewhere. Yeah, they had to agree on this visual 00:05:11.889 --> 00:05:13.829 language at some point in history. And we actually 00:05:13.829 --> 00:05:16.750 have a remarkably precise date for when that 00:05:16.750 --> 00:05:18.870 visual language first appeared in print. Which 00:05:18.870 --> 00:05:22.009 is pretty rare for linguistic stuff. It is. The 00:05:22.009 --> 00:05:25.550 first known documented use of agraulics was published 00:05:25.550 --> 00:05:30.209 on November 1st, 1901. 1901. Theodore Roosevelt 00:05:30.209 --> 00:05:32.410 is in the White House. We are barely into the 00:05:32.410 --> 00:05:35.250 20th century and someone is already inventing 00:05:35.250 --> 00:05:38.360 typographic swearing. Yeah, it happened in a 00:05:38.360 --> 00:05:41.180 comic strip called Lady Bountiful, which was 00:05:41.180 --> 00:05:44.259 created by an artist named Jean Carr. Okay. And 00:05:44.259 --> 00:05:46.779 the specific strip where this debuted was brilliantly 00:05:46.779 --> 00:05:50.399 titled Lady Bountiful is Shocked. The details 00:05:50.399 --> 00:05:52.379 of this first appearance from the source material 00:05:52.379 --> 00:05:55.470 are just fantastic. They really are. The narrative 00:05:55.470 --> 00:05:57.990 setup is super simple. Two children are arguing 00:05:57.990 --> 00:06:00.449 with each other, and one of the kids has a speech 00:06:00.449 --> 00:06:02.529 bubble that doesn't just contain standard keyboard 00:06:02.529 --> 00:06:04.670 symbols. Right, it's not just hashtags and at 00:06:04.670 --> 00:06:06.990 -signs. No, it starts with an exclamation point, 00:06:07.149 --> 00:06:09.509 an asterisk, an exclamation point, a dash, an 00:06:09.509 --> 00:06:11.589 exclamation point, another dash, and then it 00:06:11.589 --> 00:06:13.930 just evolves beyond standard typography entirely. 00:06:14.410 --> 00:06:16.670 The artist just moves away from the constraints 00:06:16.670 --> 00:06:19.970 of a typewriter and starts utilizing the freedom 00:06:19.970 --> 00:06:23.860 of ink. Jinkar actually drew... custom, completely 00:06:23.860 --> 00:06:26.480 unpronounceable shapes. He drew a spiral with 00:06:26.480 --> 00:06:29.000 line wrapped around it, and then a series of 00:06:29.000 --> 00:06:32.040 jagged lines drawn around a dot. It's so visceral. 00:06:32.240 --> 00:06:34.420 And then the character of Lady Bountiful reacts 00:06:34.420 --> 00:06:37.699 by explicitly objecting to such language. It's 00:06:37.699 --> 00:06:39.720 a fascinating choice. Oh, absolutely. I mean, 00:06:39.720 --> 00:06:43.019 why not just use asterisks and dashes? Why go 00:06:43.019 --> 00:06:45.040 through the trouble of drawing custom spirals 00:06:45.040 --> 00:06:47.959 and dotted lines to convey this raw, unfiltered 00:06:47.959 --> 00:06:50.319 emotion? That's the big question. Was this just 00:06:50.319 --> 00:06:53.000 a pragmatic tool to get past a strict newspaper 00:06:53.000 --> 00:06:55.699 editor, or was Carr stumbling onto a completely 00:06:55.699 --> 00:06:58.300 new form of creative expression? If we connect 00:06:58.300 --> 00:07:01.720 this to the bigger picture of early 20th century 00:07:01.720 --> 00:07:05.160 media, it is definitively a new form of creative 00:07:05.160 --> 00:07:07.180 expression. Really? Yeah. You have to put yourself 00:07:07.180 --> 00:07:09.740 in the shoes of a cartoonist in 1901. They were 00:07:09.740 --> 00:07:12.540 pioneering a brand new visual grammar for a medium 00:07:12.540 --> 00:07:14.959 that was entirely static and entirely silent. 00:07:15.079 --> 00:07:17.920 Ray, ink on paper has no volume. It has no audio 00:07:17.920 --> 00:07:20.439 track. Exactly the challenge. They were trying 00:07:20.439 --> 00:07:24.100 to draw the invisible. How do you visually represent 00:07:24.100 --> 00:07:26.639 invisible concepts? Yeah, how do you show the 00:07:26.639 --> 00:07:29.779 harsh, guttural, ugly tone of an angry voice 00:07:29.779 --> 00:07:32.939 using only black ink? Right. And a spiral represents 00:07:32.939 --> 00:07:35.560 winding up, like a tension that is about to snap. 00:07:36.540 --> 00:07:38.720 Jagged lines around a dot feel like an explosion 00:07:38.720 --> 00:07:41.500 of pressure. Oh, wow. The growlix was just this 00:07:41.560 --> 00:07:44.800 brilliant innovative solution to represent the 00:07:44.800 --> 00:07:47.920 ugly sharp texture of a curse word without writing 00:07:47.920 --> 00:07:50.199 the word itself. And it clearly resonated with 00:07:50.199 --> 00:07:52.300 audiences and other artists because the adoption 00:07:52.300 --> 00:07:55.660 rate was incredibly fast. Super fast. The source 00:07:55.660 --> 00:07:58.139 material notes that just over a year later on 00:07:58.139 --> 00:08:01.779 December 12, 1902, The Cats and Jammer Kids, 00:08:01.819 --> 00:08:04.480 which was a massively popular, highly influential 00:08:04.480 --> 00:08:07.540 comic, became the second strip to adopt the style. 00:08:07.660 --> 00:08:10.399 Which really cemented it. Yeah. From there, the 00:08:10.399 --> 00:08:14.230 usage rapidly throughout 1902 and 1903. The visual 00:08:14.230 --> 00:08:16.930 language was firmly established. The visual language 00:08:16.930 --> 00:08:19.170 was established, yes, but the spoken language 00:08:19.170 --> 00:08:20.970 had not caught up at all. What do you mean? Well, 00:08:20.990 --> 00:08:23.550 they were drawing these complex spirals and symbol 00:08:23.550 --> 00:08:26.129 clusters, but they didn't actually have a name 00:08:26.129 --> 00:08:28.170 for what they were creating. It was just a nameless 00:08:28.170 --> 00:08:30.709 tool. Okay, here's where it gets really interesting. 00:08:30.850 --> 00:08:34.139 Oh, yeah. We have the visual invention clearly 00:08:34.139 --> 00:08:38.200 documented in 1901, but the etymology -like where 00:08:38.200 --> 00:08:41.299 the actual word growlix comes from is a total 00:08:41.299 --> 00:08:44.340 historical hoodunit that spanned decades. Let's 00:08:44.340 --> 00:08:47.259 look at the sound of the word itself first. Okay. 00:08:47.279 --> 00:08:49.840 Merriam -Webster suggests that growlix might 00:08:49.840 --> 00:08:52.519 originate from the root word growl. That makes 00:08:52.519 --> 00:08:55.480 perfect intuitive sense. It does, right? A growl 00:08:55.480 --> 00:08:58.139 is the guttural, angry, primitive sound a person 00:08:58.139 --> 00:09:00.679 or an animal makes when they are upset or threatened. 00:09:00.840 --> 00:09:03.820 Yeah, the word growlix mimics that hard aggressive 00:09:03.820 --> 00:09:05.700 growl sound right at the front of the throat. 00:09:06.240 --> 00:09:07.919 Exactly. It practically sounds like a curse word 00:09:07.919 --> 00:09:10.360 itself. It really does. But who actually coined 00:09:10.360 --> 00:09:13.120 it? Because for over half a century, the creation 00:09:13.120 --> 00:09:15.720 of the word growlix was universally attributed 00:09:15.720 --> 00:09:18.600 to Mort Walker. And Mort Walker is an absolute 00:09:18.600 --> 00:09:20.960 titan in the American cartooning world. He is 00:09:20.960 --> 00:09:23.379 most famous for creating the long running comic 00:09:23.379 --> 00:09:28.039 strip Beetle Bailey. Right. And in 1964, Morat 00:09:28.039 --> 00:09:30.940 Walker wrote an article titled, Let's Get Down 00:09:30.940 --> 00:09:33.639 to Grolixes, where he really popularized the 00:09:33.639 --> 00:09:36.299 term. He put it on the map. He did. And later 00:09:36.299 --> 00:09:39.559 on, he expanded on this entire concept in a very 00:09:39.559 --> 00:09:42.740 famous book called The Lexicon of Comicana, which 00:09:42.740 --> 00:09:45.809 is a great book. In that book, Walker essentially 00:09:45.809 --> 00:09:48.850 created a comprehensive dictionary for all the 00:09:48.850 --> 00:09:50.870 visual shorthand used in the comic industry. 00:09:50.970 --> 00:09:53.149 Right, he categorized everything. He gave names 00:09:53.149 --> 00:09:55.429 to the little sweat drops that fly off a nervous 00:09:55.429 --> 00:09:57.970 character's head, the little dust clouds that 00:09:57.970 --> 00:10:00.210 appear when someone runs away fast, and of course 00:10:00.210 --> 00:10:02.730 the string of symbols used for swearing. And 00:10:02.730 --> 00:10:05.090 because he wrote the definitive dictionary... 00:10:05.049 --> 00:10:07.789 Everyone just accepted that Mort Walker invented 00:10:07.789 --> 00:10:10.909 the word. Right. We accepted it until a highly 00:10:10.909 --> 00:10:13.269 respected comic scholar named Maggie Thompson 00:10:13.269 --> 00:10:15.289 started digging into the archives. Yeah, this 00:10:15.289 --> 00:10:18.190 is where the twist happens. In 2013, Maggie Thompson 00:10:18.190 --> 00:10:21.029 makes a massive discovery. She finds concrete 00:10:21.029 --> 00:10:23.289 proof that Mort Walker did not invent the word 00:10:23.289 --> 00:10:26.570 Grawlix. Right. She traced the term back to a 00:10:26.570 --> 00:10:28.470 writer named Charles D. Rice. Charles D. Rice. 00:10:28.750 --> 00:10:31.629 Yeah. Rice was a writer for a magazine called 00:10:31.629 --> 00:10:34.279 This Week. And he had written an article that 00:10:34.279 --> 00:10:37.440 was later reprinted in a 1954 book titled, What's 00:10:37.440 --> 00:10:41.299 Funny About That? In that text, Charles D. Rice 00:10:41.299 --> 00:10:45.519 explicitly uses the term Grawlix. This places 00:10:45.519 --> 00:10:48.039 the invention of the word a full decade before 00:10:48.039 --> 00:10:51.480 Mort Walker's famous 1964 article. So Charles 00:10:51.480 --> 00:10:53.820 D. Rice is the true father of the Grawlix. He 00:10:53.820 --> 00:10:56.470 is. But the ultimate irony of this whole historical 00:10:56.470 --> 00:10:58.990 mix -up is that Mort Walker, the man who received 00:10:58.990 --> 00:11:01.190 all the unearned credit, actually tried to set 00:11:01.190 --> 00:11:03.440 the record straight himself. He really did. In 00:11:03.440 --> 00:11:06.740 his 1975 book Backstage at the Strips, Walker 00:11:06.740 --> 00:11:09.220 explicitly credited Charlie Rice of This Week 00:11:09.220 --> 00:11:11.899 magazine for inventing the term. He literally 00:11:11.899 --> 00:11:14.179 cited his source. He attempted to pass the credit 00:11:14.179 --> 00:11:16.539 back to the rightful owner. But the entire comics 00:11:16.539 --> 00:11:18.700 community, including scholars like Maggie Thompson, 00:11:18.740 --> 00:11:21.039 who eventually uncovered the truth decades later, 00:11:21.440 --> 00:11:24.460 read Walker's 1975 citation and completely dismissed 00:11:24.460 --> 00:11:27.179 it. They thought it was a bit. Yes. They assumed 00:11:27.179 --> 00:11:29.519 Walker was just making a joke. They thought Charlie 00:11:29.519 --> 00:11:32.399 Rice was a fake imaginary scholarly attribution 00:11:32.399 --> 00:11:35.000 that Walker invented just to sound absurdly academic. 00:11:35.139 --> 00:11:37.960 It is an astonishing game of academic telephone. 00:11:38.379 --> 00:11:40.600 The absolute truth was printed in plain sight 00:11:40.600 --> 00:11:43.139 and everyone just chose to ignore it. I mean 00:11:43.139 --> 00:11:46.039 why are we so incredibly quick to assign credit 00:11:46.039 --> 00:11:48.799 to a famous popularizer instead of trusting the 00:11:48.799 --> 00:11:51.610 actual inventor? even when the popularizer is 00:11:51.610 --> 00:11:53.590 waving his hands and pointing directly at the 00:11:53.590 --> 00:11:56.129 real creator. Well, this highlights a fascinating 00:11:56.129 --> 00:11:59.169 flaw in how history, authority, and information 00:11:59.169 --> 00:12:01.950 are recorded. How so? Mort Walker possessed a 00:12:01.950 --> 00:12:05.289 massive, highly visible platform. He was famous, 00:12:05.669 --> 00:12:07.990 and more importantly, he authored the authoritative 00:12:07.990 --> 00:12:10.950 textbook on comic terminology. Right. When you 00:12:10.950 --> 00:12:13.269 write the dictionary, you inherently become the 00:12:13.269 --> 00:12:15.610 default authority. The gravity of his platform 00:12:15.610 --> 00:12:17.750 just completely warped the historical record. 00:12:18.169 --> 00:12:21.070 Exactly. The popularizer often eclipses the creator 00:12:21.070 --> 00:12:23.649 in our historical memory because the public narrative 00:12:23.649 --> 00:12:26.509 strongly prefers the simpler story. Yeah, the 00:12:26.509 --> 00:12:28.450 narrative that the famous cartoonist who wrote 00:12:28.450 --> 00:12:30.769 the book also invented the word. It's neat and 00:12:30.769 --> 00:12:33.710 tidy. Exactly. And the context of the medium 00:12:33.710 --> 00:12:36.299 also plays a crucial role here. Comic strips 00:12:36.299 --> 00:12:39.679 were viewed as a funny, unserious medium. Oh, 00:12:39.679 --> 00:12:42.539 so they expected a joke. Right. Scholars and 00:12:42.539 --> 00:12:44.460 readers were conditioned to expect a punchline. 00:12:44.940 --> 00:12:47.120 So when they encountered a completely factual, 00:12:47.360 --> 00:12:49.879 dry citation of a mid -century magazine writer, 00:12:50.580 --> 00:12:54.360 they misread reality as a joke. It is. A tragic 00:12:54.360 --> 00:12:56.940 loss of legacy for Charles G. Rice, honestly, 00:12:57.200 --> 00:13:00.039 but it provides a brilliant window into the mechanics 00:13:00.039 --> 00:13:03.279 of history. It really does. So we have journeyed 00:13:03.279 --> 00:13:06.600 from the static, silent ink of a 1901 newspaper 00:13:06.600 --> 00:13:09.600 to the murky waters of mid -century academic 00:13:09.600 --> 00:13:12.980 citations. But the Gralics didn't stay trapped 00:13:12.980 --> 00:13:15.990 in vintage newspaper comics. No. It evolved. 00:13:16.210 --> 00:13:18.289 It didn't fade away into obscurity when comic 00:13:18.289 --> 00:13:20.330 strips started to lose their cultural dominance. 00:13:20.549 --> 00:13:23.450 Instead, it managed to completely conquer modern 00:13:23.450 --> 00:13:25.950 digital communication. The concept of the Graalux 00:13:25.950 --> 00:13:28.289 has transitioned so seamlessly into the digital 00:13:28.289 --> 00:13:31.190 age that it's now literally coded into the foundational 00:13:31.190 --> 00:13:33.570 software of our devices. It's everywhere. It 00:13:33.570 --> 00:13:35.850 isn't just a quirky habit of people typing random 00:13:35.850 --> 00:13:37.850 symbols on their keyboards anymore. The Graalux 00:13:37.850 --> 00:13:40.149 has been formally standardized by the consortiums 00:13:40.149 --> 00:13:42.149 that control our digital language. Right, because 00:13:42.149 --> 00:13:45.320 in 2016, a formal proposal was submitted for 00:13:45.320 --> 00:13:48.659 a brand new emoji. The official technical designation 00:13:48.659 --> 00:13:53.200 in the code is EmojiU plus 1F92C, and the literal 00:13:53.200 --> 00:13:56.220 description attached to that code is, serious 00:13:56.220 --> 00:13:59.179 face with symbols covering mouth. which loops 00:13:59.179 --> 00:14:01.580 us perfectly back to Gene Carr's 1901 comic. 00:14:01.679 --> 00:14:04.299 It really does. It is the exact visual intent 00:14:04.299 --> 00:14:07.179 of anger masked by unpronounceable symbols. And 00:14:07.179 --> 00:14:09.840 in 2017, that proposal was officially accepted 00:14:09.840 --> 00:14:13.580 into Unicode 10 .0. Every smartphone on the planet 00:14:13.580 --> 00:14:16.440 now carries that little red angry face with the 00:14:16.440 --> 00:14:18.720 at hash dollar percent ampersand banner covering 00:14:18.720 --> 00:14:21.330 its mouth. It's universal now. But the technological 00:14:21.330 --> 00:14:23.769 adoption is only half the story. The formal, 00:14:24.110 --> 00:14:26.690 incredibly rigid world of institutional dictionaries 00:14:26.690 --> 00:14:29.070 has finally capitulated to the Graalics as well. 00:14:29.309 --> 00:14:31.830 The timeline of its acceptance into formal English 00:14:31.830 --> 00:14:34.470 has accelerated remarkably. It really has. In 00:14:34.470 --> 00:14:37.029 June of 2018, the prestigious Merriam -Webster 00:14:37.029 --> 00:14:39.649 Dictionary officially added the word Graalics 00:14:39.649 --> 00:14:43.169 to their lexicon. Then in November 2022, it crossed 00:14:43.169 --> 00:14:46.029 over into interactive pop culture. Merriam -Webster 00:14:46.029 --> 00:14:48.610 and Hasbro teamed up to release the seventh edition 00:14:48.610 --> 00:14:50.690 of the official Scrabble Players Dictionary. 00:14:50.870 --> 00:14:53.850 A huge milestone. Yeah, sitting right there among 00:14:53.850 --> 00:14:56.169 the sanctioned words you can legally play for 00:14:56.169 --> 00:14:59.950 points on a board is Grawlix. And the explicit 00:14:59.950 --> 00:15:03.250 reason the publisher cited for adding it? Familiarity 00:15:03.250 --> 00:15:05.610 among younger players. That specific demographic 00:15:05.610 --> 00:15:08.830 detail is crucial. It is. Bringing us right up 00:15:08.830 --> 00:15:11.500 to the present moment. Literally this very month, 00:15:11.759 --> 00:15:14.759 March 2025, the heavyweight champion of the English 00:15:14.759 --> 00:15:17.240 language, the Oxford English Dictionary, has 00:15:17.240 --> 00:15:20.220 officially added the word Grawlix to its ranks. 00:15:20.299 --> 00:15:23.340 Wow. So what does this all mean? We are staring 00:15:23.340 --> 00:15:26.600 at a wild linguistic paradox here. What do you 00:15:26.600 --> 00:15:29.340 mean? Well, a growlix, by definition, is supposed 00:15:29.340 --> 00:15:31.539 to be a cluster of meaningless, unpronounceable 00:15:31.539 --> 00:15:33.580 symbols that stand in for a word you aren't allowed 00:15:33.580 --> 00:15:36.240 to say. Right. But now that growlix is a valid 00:15:36.240 --> 00:15:39.200 high -scoring Scrabble word and an official OED 00:15:39.200 --> 00:15:41.980 entry, hasn't it stopped being just a symbol 00:15:41.980 --> 00:15:45.080 for a word and actually morphed into a real functional 00:15:45.080 --> 00:15:47.779 word itself? This raises such an important question 00:15:47.779 --> 00:15:49.899 about the life cycle of language and how we define 00:15:49.899 --> 00:15:52.419 words. You were pointing at a beautiful irony. 00:15:52.759 --> 00:15:55.019 It's so strange to think about. You can now sit 00:15:55.019 --> 00:15:58.019 down at a Scrabble board, place the tiles G -R 00:15:58.019 --> 00:16:02.080 -A -W -L -I -X down on the grid, and score points 00:16:02.080 --> 00:16:04.980 using the exact alphabetic letters that the concept 00:16:04.980 --> 00:16:07.629 was originally invented to hide. It is highly 00:16:07.629 --> 00:16:09.789 meta. You are literally spelling a word that 00:16:09.789 --> 00:16:12.710 describes the absence of spelling. Exactly. But 00:16:12.710 --> 00:16:14.429 the most striking part of the Scrabble edition 00:16:14.429 --> 00:16:17.090 is that it was driven by younger players. Yeah, 00:16:17.190 --> 00:16:19.490 the teenagers. You have teenagers and young adults 00:16:19.490 --> 00:16:23.230 in the 2020s who are keeping a visual trick invented 00:16:23.230 --> 00:16:27.200 in a 1901 newspaper comic strip alive. It's amazing. 00:16:27.320 --> 00:16:29.000 Not only are they keeping it alive, they're pushing 00:16:29.000 --> 00:16:32.100 it into formal, institutional dictionaries through 00:16:32.100 --> 00:16:34.500 sheer usage. They forced it into the dictionary. 00:16:34.580 --> 00:16:37.240 Yes. And the emoji we discussed, that serious 00:16:37.240 --> 00:16:39.919 face with symbols over the mouth, acts as the 00:16:39.919 --> 00:16:42.480 perfect bridge. How so? It connects the original 00:16:42.480 --> 00:16:45.419 1901 visual gag of drawing obscure shapes over 00:16:45.419 --> 00:16:48.220 a character's mouth directly with 21st century 00:16:48.220 --> 00:16:51.340 rapid -fire text messaging. It proves that the 00:16:51.340 --> 00:16:53.679 fundamental human need to express polite anger 00:16:53.679 --> 00:16:56.899 hasn't changed in over a century. Only the medium 00:16:56.899 --> 00:17:00.500 has evolved. So the next time you're fuming and 00:17:00.500 --> 00:17:02.919 you rapid fire a string of shift key symbols 00:17:02.919 --> 00:17:05.759 into a group chat or you carefully select that 00:17:05.759 --> 00:17:08.400 little red swearing face emoji, I want you to 00:17:08.400 --> 00:17:11.079 remember this journey. It's not just random. 00:17:11.740 --> 00:17:14.519 No. You aren't just mashing your keyboard in 00:17:14.519 --> 00:17:17.279 a blind rage. You are actively participating 00:17:17.279 --> 00:17:21.450 in a rich 120 -year -old tradition of polite 00:17:21.450 --> 00:17:24.069 rage. A very distinguished tradition. You are 00:17:24.069 --> 00:17:26.950 utilizing the exact same visual grammar that 00:17:26.950 --> 00:17:30.089 Jean Carr used in 1901 to keep Lady Bountiful 00:17:30.089 --> 00:17:32.289 from fainting at the breakfast table. Which is 00:17:32.289 --> 00:17:34.390 pretty cool to think about. It's an absolute 00:17:34.390 --> 00:17:36.670 testament to how human creativity will always 00:17:36.670 --> 00:17:40.069 find a clever, expressive workaround for society's 00:17:40.069 --> 00:17:42.690 strict social constraints. You find a way? We 00:17:42.690 --> 00:17:44.609 can't print the actual words, so we're just gonna 00:17:44.609 --> 00:17:46.869 draw a tension spiral and a hashtag, and we trust 00:17:46.869 --> 00:17:48.470 that you're gonna know exactly what we mean. 00:17:48.599 --> 00:17:51.480 It is a perfect synthesis of constraint breeding 00:17:51.480 --> 00:17:54.359 creativity. But as we think about where human 00:17:54.359 --> 00:17:56.900 communication goes next, there is a lingering, 00:17:57.640 --> 00:17:59.900 somewhat unpredictable frontier that the growlix 00:17:59.900 --> 00:18:01.859 is going to have to navigate very soon. Oh, I 00:18:01.859 --> 00:18:05.039 am intrigued. What is the next frontier for typographic 00:18:05.039 --> 00:18:08.019 swearing? Consider the rapid rise of accessibility 00:18:08.019 --> 00:18:11.160 tools and artificial intelligence. We're moving 00:18:11.160 --> 00:18:14.039 deeply into an era where AI and text -to -speech 00:18:14.039 --> 00:18:16.559 programs are increasingly reading our digital 00:18:16.559 --> 00:18:19.660 text out loud to us. Oh, right, like screen readers. 00:18:19.900 --> 00:18:21.880 Exactly. We use screen readers for the visually 00:18:21.880 --> 00:18:24.500 impaired, and we use virtual assistants that 00:18:24.500 --> 00:18:27.359 read our text messages to us over our car speakers 00:18:27.359 --> 00:18:30.440 while we drive. So how will future technologies 00:18:30.440 --> 00:18:34.660 actually pronounce agrolyx? Oh, wow. If the entire 00:18:34.660 --> 00:18:37.000 point of the growlix is that it is unpronounceable, 00:18:37.400 --> 00:18:39.819 what does a machine do when forced to speak it? 00:18:39.900 --> 00:18:42.460 Exactly. When an AI assistant encounters an at 00:18:42.460 --> 00:18:45.200 sign, a hashtag, a dollar sign, a percent, and 00:18:45.200 --> 00:18:47.619 an ampersand in the middle of an angry text thread, 00:18:47.920 --> 00:18:50.480 how does it process that social contract? That's 00:18:50.480 --> 00:18:52.720 a great question. Do the software engineers program 00:18:52.720 --> 00:18:55.900 it to revert back to a literal auditory TV bleep? 00:18:55.960 --> 00:18:58.640 Maybe. Or does the machine fail to grasp the 00:18:58.640 --> 00:19:01.660 context and just robotically read at sign, hash, 00:19:01.880 --> 00:19:04.720 dollar percent which would ruin the emotion entirely 00:19:04.720 --> 00:19:08.259 it would or are we going to have to invent a 00:19:08.259 --> 00:19:11.119 completely new universally recognized spoken 00:19:11.119 --> 00:19:14.799 sound just for typographical anger. That is wild. 00:19:14.980 --> 00:19:17.859 We spent 120 years perfecting a way to make swearing 00:19:17.859 --> 00:19:20.640 silent and highly visual, and now the robots 00:19:20.640 --> 00:19:23.519 are going to force us to figure out what an angry 00:19:23.519 --> 00:19:25.920 hashtag actually sounds like when spoken out 00:19:25.920 --> 00:19:27.920 loud. It's the next great linguistic challenge. 00:19:28.140 --> 00:19:29.880 Well, the next time you are furiously mashing 00:19:29.880 --> 00:19:31.880 that shift number row, just imagine how your 00:19:31.880 --> 00:19:34.039 smartphone's AI is going to try and scream those 00:19:34.039 --> 00:19:36.339 symbols back to you. Thanks for joining us on 00:19:36.339 --> 00:19:38.200 this deep dive. We will catch you next time.