Unsupported titles/¯\`lowbar`(ツ)`lowbar`/¯

Translingual

Alternative forms

¯_(ツ)_/¯ (failed rendering)

Etymology

Created using the Japanese katakana ツ (tsu) to represent a pair of eyes and smirking mouth, and various other Unicode characters to represent shrugging arms.

Symbol

¯\_(ツ )_/¯

An emoticon representing a smirking face and a pair of arms raised in a shrug; a shruggie.
- 2012, Arrow (Renton High School, Renton, Washington), Volume 4, Issue 7, 30 May 2012, page 2:
  Kevin Chung misses his one emo-scene who got away ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- 2014, Elias Isquith, "Sean Hannity: I can’t encourage military service 'in good conscience' while Obama is president", Salon, 5 September 2014:
  Peters next went on to remind Hannity that Obama would eventually no longer be president (which strikes us as not particularly germane to Hannity’s claim that he couldn’t recommend military service while Obama is president, but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯) and then called the military “the one institution we must preserve at all costs.”
- 2014 September 15, Tim Herrera, “How Urban Outfitters trades on moral outrage”, in The Washington Post‎^[1] (in English):
  4. (Optional) Send half-hearted “sorry you were offended ¯\_(ツ)_/¯” non-apology.
- For more quotations using this term, see Citations:Unsupported titles/¯\`lowbar`(ツ)`lowbar`/¯.

Usage notes

Despite the use of a Japanese character, it is overall wholly uncharacteristic of Japanese kaomoji and indeed is used primarily in the West.