Man shrugging: medium skin tone Emoji

People

A man with a medium skin tone lifting his shoulders and palms upward in a universal gesture of uncertainty or apathy. The expression is blank, signaling a lack of knowledge or a 'whatever' attitude toward a situation.

Usage Context

This is the go-to emoji when you have no answer to a question, don't care about the outcome, or are feeling particularly helpless in a conversation. It frequently acts as a digital version of 'beats me' and pairs perfectly with the 🤷 or the face-palm 🤦🏽‍♂️ when expressing frustration.

History

The shrug gesture was added to the Unicode standard in 2016 as part of Emoji 3.0. It was specifically requested to fill the gap for non-verbal cues in mobile messaging, as users struggled to convey passive indifference using only text-based emoticons like the classic ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

Details

Glyph

🤷🏽‍♂

Unicode

U+1F937 U+1F3FD U+200D U+2642

Shortcode

:emoji_u1f937_1f3fd_200d_2642:

HTML Entity

&#xD83E;&#xDD37;&#xD83C;&#xDFFD;‍♂

Specifications

Vendor Microsoft

Category People

Subcategory person-gesture

Unicode Version 6.0

Emoji Version 1.0

License MIT

Microsoft Fluent License

Emoji graphics by Microsoft. © Microsoft Corporation. Licensed under MIT. Excludes assets such as Clippy, flags, and trademarks.

Microsoft Fluent Emoji assets are licensed under the MIT License. Certain assets—such as Clippy, country flags, and Microsoft product/brand trademarks—are excluded from this license and may not be used without separate permission.

MIT License Fluent Emoji Repository