Translated material
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The smile, which became a meme in Russia thanks to Lenta.ru, began to gain momentum in the West
Two months after Lenta.ru made the “¯\_(ツ)_/¯” emoticon a popular meme in Russia, it began to gain momentum again - but this time on foreign social networks. TJournal recalls how the history of the emoticon developed, which in the West was nicknamed “shruggie” - “Pozhimalkin”.
On March 12, Lenta.ru reported that the owner of the merged company Rambler&Co, Alexander Mamut, decided to resign editor-in-chief Galina Timchenko, who had worked in this position since 2004.
On March 13, 39 employees of the publication wrote letters of resignation, and already on March 17, in the “Who makes Lenta.ru” section, emoticons began to appear instead of the names of some of them.
The “¯\_(ツ)_/¯” emoticon with a smiling man shrugging his shoulders carefree almost immediately began to be used by other media to announce events related to Lenta.ru.
Goreslavsky told ITAR TASS that the new Lenta.ru will become an “economic publication.”
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
— TV channel RAIN (@tvrain) March 17, 2014
They also noted the disappearance of former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych.
President of Ukraine ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
— EUROMAIDAN (@euromaidan) March 17, 2014
On April 1, when former VKontakte CEO Pavel Durov announced his resignation for the first time, an emoticon appeared instead of his name at the bottom of the social network page.
Former Lenta.ru special correspondent Ilya Azar still uses it in his Twitter handle.
I saw my nyasha today, she’s a nyasha
— illya¯\_(ツ)_/¯nyashmyash (@A3AP) May 20, 2014
Two months later, Western publications reported that the same smiley had gained incredible popularity on the English-speaking Internet. Netizens, as before in Russia, began to publish numerous jokes using it. However, none of the publications attributes a “Russian trace” to the trend.
┓┏┓┏┓┃ ┛┗┛┗┛┃ ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ┓┏┓┏┓┃ ┛┗┛┗┛┃ ┓┏┓┏┓┃ ┛┗┛┗┛┃ ┓┏┓┏┓┃ ┛┗┛┗┛┃ ┓┏┓┏┓┃ ┃┃┃┃┃┃ ┻┻┻┻┻┻
— samir mezrahi (@samir) May 21, 2014
*gets on phone to check weather *checks twitter *doesn't check weather ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
— Jesse Hersha (@zania_jay) May 20, 2014
I see everyone seems to have discovered ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ , but are you familiar with my friend ༼ ༎ຶ ෴ ༎ຶ༽
— Fred Benenson (@fredbenenson) May 21, 2014
On May 22, large brands began to pay attention to the smiley.
And the media began to publish instructions on how this character set can be typed more easily without copying it to Mac and iPhone.
"¯\_(ツ)_/¯" is known in the West as "shruggie" or "kaomoji", a Japanese facial marking. It differs from emojii and emoticons by using characters from the katakana alphabet.
This emoji first went viral on the English-language Internet in 2009, when rapper Kanye West ruined the moment of presenting an award to singer Taylor Swift by shouting into the crowd that Beyoncé had shot the best video. Before leaving the stage, he made a gesture that looked similar to "¯\_(ツ)_/¯".
Two years later, the emoji became popular again thanks to a world-class Starcraft II player named SeleCT. With its help, he completed all victorious matches, and the set of symbols itself acquired the meaning “sup son” (“well, son?”).
Netizens began to pay attention to this gesture from heroes of films and TV series.
I will be original (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻,
Vadim Elistratov,
TJournal
#Article #Pavel_Durov #VKontakte #Kanye_West #Viktor_Yanukovich #Lenta_ru #Beyonce #Taylor_Swift #Alexander_Mamut #emoticons #Rambler_Co #emoji #emoticons