Last checked by the TextEditor.com team
What is the lenny face made of?
The classic lenny has eleven characters. Three of them are spaces, and three are marks that you can't see on their own: the two eyebrows and the smile.
The dotted circle ◌ only shows where a mark sits. It is not part of the face.
The eyebrow and the smile are combining characters. They have no width of their own. Each one hangs on the space in front of it and stretches over the next character. If you delete a space, the eyebrow lands on the wrong spot and the face falls apart.
Where did the lenny face come from?
According to Know Your Meme, one of the first known posts was on the Finnish image board Ylilauta on November 18, 2012. Within a few hours it showed up on 4chan, where so many people spammed it that some got banned. The same day it reached Reddit and YouTube.
On 4chan it was called "Le Lenny Face". We found no source that explains the name Lenny.
What does ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) mean?
It is a sly, smug look. People add it to a sentence to hint at a second, joking meaning. "I'll bring the cake ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)" means something different from "I'll bring the cake". It is also used just to spam a thread, which is how it spread in the first place.
Why does my lenny look broken?
The eyebrows sit on top of other characters, so the font decides where they land. In some fonts they slide sideways or sit too high. The characters are still right, so the face looks fine again on another device.
Famous lenny variants
| Face | Name | When people use it |
|---|---|---|
| ( ͡~ ͜ʖ ͡°) | Wink | A joke you are both in on |
| ( ͡° ʖ̯ ͡°) | Serious lenny | Disappointed or unimpressed |
| ( ͡ಠ ͜ʖ ͡ಠ) | Thick eyebrows | Suspicious or judging |
| ¯\_( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)_/¯ | Lenny shrug | "Who knows" with a grin |
| (∩ ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)⊃━☆ﾟ. * | Wizard | Casting a spell, making something happen |
| ( ͡°( ͡° ͜ʖ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)ʖ ͡°) ͡°) | Crowd | Everyone is in on the joke |