A FAMILIAR MEME. A NEW CONTEXT.
I Dunno LOL, or Shruggie, is the text emoticon ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ depicting a person shrugging. It stands for "I don't know LOL" and conveys ironic ignorance or indifference that is easier to show with a symbol than with words.
Add your captionThe editor opens with this picture. You can download the finished meme as a PNG.
The emoticon is built from keyboard symbols and Japanese script characters. The dash and the "¯" mark represent arms raised in bewilderment, the eyes and mouth are made up of a circle, an underscore, and parentheses, while the character ツ, the katakana "tsu," serves as a stand-in torso. Together they form a figure that has thrown up its hands and is looking at the other person in complete confusion.
The canonical version, more common in English-speaking communities, is written as ¯\(°_o)/¯: instead of the Japanese character, it has a round face with wide-open eyes. In the Russian-speaking world the version with ツ took hold, which is why it's recognized as "Pozhimalkin." Both versions convey the same emotion, and the difference is more a matter of habit and taste than meaning.
The emoticon's exact author and the first place it was published have not been established. It's believed the device arose in text chats and on forums in the early 2010s, where graphical emoji were lacking but people wanted a quick way to convey an ironic shrug. The look with the ツ character is tied to Japanese text symbols that were widely used at the time on the Western internet for elaborate "kaomoji."
The version with the Japanese character spread through Twitter, forums, and messengers and entered common use among users worldwide. The name I Dunno LOL and the Russian version "Pozhimalkin" formed within communities that encountered the emoticon through everyday chat rather than through one specific publication. In the catalog the meme is dated to 2014, matching the period of its mass spread; the exact date of its first appearance is hard to pin down.
The emoticon is placed at the end of a short line when someone wants to say "I don't know," "I don't care," or "oh well." Typical captions look like this: "Where are the keys? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯" or "Why is the server down again? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯" It works as a polite disclaimer: the other person understands there's no answer, and no one is obligated to come up with one.
In chats, the emoji often serves as a reply to a question that has no clear-cut answer by nature: a matter of taste, a pointless task, or a tricky bug nobody managed to fix. Variations include raised arms, captions placed inside images, and whole sequences of panels where the shrug becomes the punchline of a short comic.
The main reason for its staying power is that the emoticon conveys both an emotion and an attitude at once. The shrug is short, understandable without translation, and needs no explanation. It expresses three things at once: ignorance, indifference, and a light resignation toward what's happening.
The emoji also works well in situations that call for irony. It creates a comic effect through the contrast between a serious question and a carefree gesture, and the ツ character gives it a visual accent that makes it stand out among ordinary parentheses. That's why the emoticon moves easily from chat messages into image captions and discussions, staying recognizable in any setting.
Four-panel comics about an overconfident guy who brags or takes on a task, fails, and sinks into despair. The final panel, with him clutching his head at a table of bottles, is the
Read the story
A frame from an old Japanese Spider-Man TV series: the hero is bent over a concrete floor, striking it with an object that looks like a wrench. Online, the scene became a joke abou
Read the story
A series of frames from the 1967 Spider-Man cartoon, where the hero in a bright red costume points dramatically upward in a solemn pose. Paired with absurd captions, the serious lo
Read the story
Comic-strip meme about a meeting where an employee with a sensible idea is thrown out of the window while everyone else keeps pitching nonsense. Published in December 2012, it spre
Read the story
A comic series where a boy bursts in and says something to his father, who slowly turns his head from the newspaper with a frozen stare. The joke is the contrast between the child'
Read the story
A two-panel comic: two characters in blue and orange T-shirts with tense faces shake hands, while in the second panel, beside them, a character in a green T-shirt sits on the floor
Read the story
Oh God, Why is a rage comics face half in dark shadow, expressing extreme confusion and despair. It usually closes a comic as a reaction to an unpleasant or humiliating story, with
Read the story
A meme based on a panel from a 1965 American comic in which Batman slaps Robin. Widely known online since 2008, the Russian caption turned it into a symbol of not wanting to listen
Read the story
Twitter flash mob in which participants promise to share as many facts on a topic as they get likes. The format quickly became an object of irony, and its parodies grew into a genr
Read the story
Overview of one of the most enduring layers of Russian-language internet humor: photozhabas, jokes and caricatures featuring Vladimir Putin that began spreading with blogs in the 2
Read the story
Meme parodying a common social media trick in which the author promises to do something if the post gets a certain number of likes. It appeared on Reddit in September 2017 and was
Read the story