🤷

Person Shrugging Emoji 🤷

Palms up, shoulders raised, this is the universal 'I don't know' — one of the most-used gesture emoji online. It stands in for 'idk,' 'whatever,' or a resigned 'oh well' when there's genuinely no better answer. Sent alone, it often just means the conversation's over and nobody's mad about it.

What 🤷 means

This gender-neutral figure has short, side-parted hair and throws both hands up in the air, level with the head, shoulders hunched slightly.

The 🤷 Person Shrugging emoji signifies a sense of being clueless, confused, shocked, and even amused by someone's or something's ridiculous nature. This emoji is available in the designated skin tones on almost all platforms.

How and when to use it

If you're reacting to something absolutely ridiculous and senseless, you can use 🤷.
🤷 can also be used to show confusion - like an attempt to understand what the final plan is over a load of spam on your BFF group.
If someone's asking you about something you have no idea of, like if there's school tomorrow or not, you can use 🤷 to indicate that you're just as clueless as the person who asked you this.
🤷 can also be a way of saying "I don't know".
If you got unexpectedly tangled in a loop of drama just because you lent a listening ear ages ago, you can use 🤷 to show that you know nothing more than what you're saying.
🤷 can also be used to show frustration and maybe even slight anger - like if someone's repeatedly asking you something, you can throw your hands in the air and go "Who knows 🤷".

Other Names

🤷 Clueless
🤷 Confused
🤷 Irritated
🤷 Cranky
🤷 Ridiculous
🤷 Shrug
🤷 Uninterested
🤷 Shruggie
🤷 Doubtful
🤷 Ignorant
🤷 I Don't Know
🤷 Whatever
🤷 Unbelievable

🤷 in real conversations

What does 🤷 mean from a girl?

'I don't know' or 'I don't care either way' — genuine uncertainty, not necessarily indifference toward the person asking. 'Are they even still together? 🤷' is a shrug at the situation, not at the question itself.

What does 🤷 mean from a guy?

The same shrug, often doing double duty for 'not my problem' or 'who knows, honestly.' Dropped after a question with no good answer — plans falling through, a decision he wasn't part of — it closes the topic fast.

What does 🤷 mean in texting?

Indifference or genuine not-knowing, and it works as a complete sentence on its own. Sent solo in reply to 'so what happens now?' it means exactly that: no idea, and maybe not much invested in finding out.

The lowdown

Category: People & Body › person-gesture
Codepoints: U+1F937
Emoji version: Emoji 3.0
Shortcodes: :shrug::person_shrugging: Discord
Keywords: doubt, dunno, guess, idk, ignorance, indifference, knows, maybe, person, shrug, shrugging, whatever, who

How it looks across platforms

Seeing a blank box instead of the emoji somewhere? Here's why that happens. Curious why the designs above don't match to begin with? Here's why that happens too.