An angular shrug Lenny using Bopomofo and CJK characters as arms. The 乁 on the left and ㄏ on the right are Bopomofo (Mandarin phonetic) and Chinese-character glyphs that visually resemble bent arms — a more angular alternative to the usual ¯_( )_/¯ shrug. The face uses ͡° eyebrows and ᗝ a Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics character as a flat down-mouth — not the classic ͜ʖ Lenny mouth but a more grumpy variant.
The substitution gives this kaomoji a different feel from the standard Lenny shrug. The angular arms feel more ‘modern Reddit/Twitter’ than the round ¯ shrug, and the ᗝ mouth removes the suggestive Lenny implication, leaving just ‘I am visibly unimpressed and shrugging.’ It is shrugging without the wink.
Use it for ‘don’t ask me’ moments without any innuendo — refusing to weigh in on a debate, declining to answer a question you do not care about, signaling that you are out of opinions. On Discord and Twitter/X it works in tech, programmer, and Korean/Chinese-language influenced communities where the angular style is more common.
In Japanese the matching mood is なんとも言えない (nan tomo ienai — ‘I can’t say anything definitive’). Pair this kaomoji with phrases like どうでもいい (‘dou demo ii’ — ‘I don’t care’), わからない (‘wakaranai’ — ‘I don’t know’), or just place it on its own.