About
I dunno LOL ( ¯\(°_o)/¯ ) is an ASCII-based emoticon of a character shrugging with arms raised in confusion. It is often used as the superlative form of the standard “surprised face” (O_o), oftentimes in response to “How do I shot web?” or any other question that only brings more questions into the conversation.
Uncertain Origin
Searches for “¯\(°_o)/¯” can be problematic because of how certain characters are omitted by many search engines, even when placed in quotes. The emoticon appears in many forum signatures which often results in false positives for 2002, shortly after vBulletin and other PHP forums first appeared.
The phrase “I dunno” has been a common English-language slang for “I don’t know” for decades and LOL has a long history as well. But the exact pairing of the two as “I dunno LOL” seems to first appear in 2006, as is evident from both a Google Date Range search, and from Google Insights (seen below).
Google Insights
Dramatica bears it only the slightest mention.
Urban Dictionary
The first definition of ¯\(°_o)/¯ on Urbandictionary was created by spacepuree on November 9th, 2006. Surprisingly, the definition does not contain the phrase “I dunno LOL.”
Excerpt:
The shrug face.
It’s not a zombie.
aznhottie15666 signed on at 12:00:00 AM.aznhottie15666: wut r u doin?
moarbbqsauce: ¯\(°_o)/¯aznhottie15666 signed off at 12:01:00 AM.
The first Urbandictionary definition to contain both and the phrase “I dunno LOL” was created by Link332 in 2007.
¯\(°_o)/¯ is a smiley that means “i dunno lol”
…¯\(°_o)/¯
¯\(°_o)/¯, i dunno lol
F-18 DUNNO LOL
