Shrug ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The shrug is a kaomoji, a face built from text characters in the Japanese tradition of upright emoticons:

• ¯ (macron), twice, for the raised hands
• a backslash and a slash for the arms
• two underscores for the shoulders
• ツ, the Japanese katakana letter tsu, for the face, inside parentheses

The face is what makes it work: ツ looks like two smiling eyes and a mouth. Every current phone and computer has fonts with Japanese characters, so it displays almost everywhere.

The meaning is a verbal shrug: “I don’t know,” “whatever,” “not my problem” or “it is what it is.” It can read as easygoing or as dismissive, so think twice before using it to answer a real question from a customer or your boss.

In apps that use Markdown formatting, such as Discord and Reddit, a backslash escapes the next character. When you paste the shrug, the backslash and the underscore after it are read as “a literal underscore,” so the backslash disappears. The result is a one-armed shrug: ¯_(ツ)_/¯. Depending on the rest of the message, the underscores can also switch on italics.

The fix is to escape the backslash itself and both underscores. Paste this version in Markdown apps:

¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯

Once posted, it displays as the normal two-armed shrug. In apps without Markdown, such as SMS or most email, paste the original version.

• Discord and Slack: type /shrug followed by your message, and the app adds a correctly formatted shrug at the end.
• Phones: save the shrug as a text replacement, for example “shrugg,” in your keyboard settings, and it works in every app.
• Mac: text replacements set in System Settings > Keyboard > Text Replacements sync to your iPhone through iCloud.
• Emoji alternative: 🤷, person shrugging, was added to Unicode in 2016 and comes in variants such as 🤷‍♀️ and 🤷‍♂️.
• Other shrugging faces: ┐(￣ヘ￣)┌ is a more exasperated kaomoji version.