How to Use Lenny Faces on Reddit (Without Breaking Them)
Reddit is the Lenny face’s home turf — the face was popularized there in 2012 — but Reddit’s markdown formatting famously breaks it. Paste ¯\_( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)_/¯ into a comment and it often loses an arm. Here’s how to post faces that survive.
Why Reddit breaks the face
Reddit comments use markdown, where the backslash (\) is an escape character and the caret, underscore, and asterisk have formatting meanings. The shrug’s left arm ¯\_ contains a backslash that markdown silently consumes.
The fix: double the backslash
Type ¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯ (with two backslashes and an escaped underscore) in old-markdown Reddit, and it renders correctly as ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. In the newer Rich Text editor, pasting the plain face usually works because the editor escapes for you — so if a face breaks, switch editors.
Faces that never break
Faces without backslashes or underscores paste safely everywhere on Reddit: ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°), (ง ͠° ͟ل͜ ͡°)ง, ┐(ツ)┌, and everything in our Meme Lenny Faces collection. When in doubt, pick a bracket-armed shrug from the Shrug Generator.