── WHAT IS THE SHRUG EMOTICON?────────────────────────────────────────────────
The shrug ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ is a kaomoji — a Japanese-style emoticon read without tilting your head. Its smiling face is the katakana letter ツ (tsu), flanked by arms built from macrons, backslashes and underscores. Because every piece is a standard Unicode character, it renders identically in chats, tweets, commit messages and terminals.
It first spread on the Japanese board 2channel in the 2000s, jumped to English-speaking internet around 2010, and was cemented in 2014 when it became shorthand for a certain amused indifference. Today it is one of the most-copied text emoticons in the world.
[+] Why does the shrug sometimes lose an arm when I paste it?
The backslash \ is an escape character in many apps (Reddit, Markdown, code). Paste the escaped version ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ there, or use the variant cards above — the SIGH and TIRED variants contain no backslashes.
[+] Is ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ actually ASCII?
Strictly no — ツ is Unicode (U+30C4). "ASCII emoticon" survives as the colloquial name for all text-based faces. Everything on this site tells you the exact code points, so you always know what you are pasting.
[+] What does the shrug mean?
"I don't know", "not my problem", or cheerful indifference — tone depends entirely on context. It is softer than typing "idk" and funnier than saying nothing.
── RELATED SYMBOLS────────────────────────────────────────────────────────