Lenny Face ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
200+ Text Faces & Kaomoji to Copy and Paste

What Is the Lenny Face?

The Lenny face ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) is a text emoticon assembled from Unicode characters — specifically the degree symbol °, a combining character ͡, and the Lenny-defining ʖ (a Latin letter with a retroflex hook). It was first posted on a Finnish imageboard in November 2012, spread to Reddit and 4chan, and became one of the most recognisable symbols of internet culture.

Unlike emoji, which are single characters, Lenny faces are strings of multiple Unicode characters arranged to look like a face. This means they display as pure text — no image rendering, no OS version dependency, identical on iPhone, Android, Windows, Mac, and any platform that renders Unicode. A Lenny face copied from this page will look the same wherever you paste it.

The Classic Lenny Face & Its Variations

The original and its closest cousins — all the faces built on the core Lenny structure. Click any to copy.

Shrug Face ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The shrug is the second most-used text face on the internet. It expresses “I don’t know,” “I don’t care,” or “whatever” — universally understood across platforms and cultures.

Happy & Excited Text Faces

Sad & Crying Text Faces

Angry & Rage Text Faces

Love & Affection Text Faces

Confused, Thinking & Suspicious

Cute Animal & Character Faces

How to Type the Lenny Face

The original Lenny face ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) is typed by combining these individual Unicode characters: open bracket, space, combining character U+0361, degree sign, space, combining character U+035C, Latin letter ʖ (U+0296), space, combining character U+0361, degree sign, close bracket.

In practice, nobody types it manually. The practical methods are:

Copy from this page — click any face above. Works on every device in under 2 seconds.

Phone text replacement (iPhone): Settings → General → Keyboard → Text Replacement. Set shortcut lenny to expand to ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°). From then on, type “lenny” anywhere and your phone auto-replaces it.

Android Gboard: Tap and hold the comma key → Personal dictionary → Add a shortcut. Same principle — type “lenny,” get the face.

Discord: You can create a text command shortcut in most Discord bots, or save the face in your phone’s Notes app for fast paste access.

Where Lenny Faces Work Best

Because they’re pure text characters, Lenny faces and kaomoji work anywhere text works — with a few platform-specific nuances worth knowing.

Discord: Full support. All Unicode characters render correctly. Lenny faces are a core part of Discord culture, especially in gaming servers. Server admins sometimes add !lenny bot commands.

Reddit: Full support in comments and posts. The shrug ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ and table flip (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻ are Reddit staples.

Twitter / X: Full support. Lenny faces stand out in replies because they’re text, not emoji — the eye catches them differently.

WhatsApp and Telegram: Full support in messages. Complex faces with many combining characters may render slightly differently on older Android devices but remain recognisable.

Instagram: Works in captions, comments, and bios. Bios with kaomoji stand out significantly in profile searches.

Twitch chat: Full support. Many streamers have text face commands set up for their bots.

Note: Some corporate or enterprise tools (Slack, Teams, Jira) occasionally strip or misrender exotic Unicode combining characters. For professional contexts, simpler faces like (ツ) or ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ are safer than heavily combined ones.

FAQ

What does ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) mean? The Lenny face has a knowing, suggestive smirk — it implies “I know something you don’t,” or is used in response to anything mildly innuendo-laden. It conveys mischief, smugness, or playful awareness.

What does ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ mean? The shrug face expresses “I don’t know,” “I don’t care,” or “what can you do.” The ツ character is the Japanese katakana for “tsu” — it happens to look like a smiling face, which is why it became the standard shrug face.

What’s the difference between kaomoji and Lenny faces? Kaomoji (顔文字) is the Japanese art form of creating faces with text characters — it originated in Japan in the 1980s. Lenny faces are a Western internet evolution of the same idea, using more obscure Unicode combining characters to create distinctive expressions. All Lenny faces are kaomoji, but not all kaomoji are Lenny faces.

Why does my Lenny face look broken after pasting? Complex Lenny faces use Unicode combining characters that must appear in a specific sequence. If the paste destination doesn’t support certain Unicode ranges, or if autocorrect modifies the text, the face can break. Solution: use simpler faces for unreliable platforms, or copy from this page and paste without auto-formatting.