The table flip, written (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻, is a text face of someone angrily throwing a table. It is built from box-drawing lines, a degree sign, a white square and parentheses, and it is usually answered with ┬─┬ノ( º _ ºノ) to put the table back.
The table flip comes in two halves, and most people only ever send the first one. (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻ throws the table; ┬─┬ノ( º _ ºノ) quietly puts it back — and the second half is what turns a tantrum into a joke. This page has 78 versions of both, what every character in them actually is, and the reason yours sometimes arrives looking crooked.
78 table flips to copy
Tap any of them. These are ordinary text characters, not images, so they paste into a message, a bio or a commit message and look the same on the other end.
The pair, in order 6
Flip it, then put it back. Sending only the first half is the joke; sending both is the whole joke, and it is the version that actually reads as friendly.
Angry faces, same table 24
The table never changes. The face is where the anger lives — ಠ益ಠ is furious, ；△； is a tantrum, and ¬_¬ is barely bothered.
Tables, big and small 18
Wider tables read as a bigger tantrum. The last few are the ones where the joke is the table itself.
Putting it back 12
The reply half. ┬─┬ is the same table the right way up — the legs point down instead of up.
Parts, for building your own 18
A face, an arm, an arc and a table. Any face plus any table works, which is why there are hundreds of these in the wild.
What each character actually is
Nothing in the table flip is what it looks like, and two of the characters are genuinely surprising.
| Character | Official name | What it is doing here |
|---|---|---|
| ┻ ━ (U+253B, U+2501) | BOX DRAWINGS HEAVY UP AND HORIZONTAL · HEAVY HORIZONTAL | The flipped table. The legs point up, which is the whole picture. |
| ┬ ─ (U+252C, U+2500) | BOX DRAWINGS LIGHT DOWN AND HORIZONTAL · LIGHT HORIZONTAL | The same table the right way up — and drawn light rather than heavy. |
| ︵ (U+FE35) | PRESENTATION FORM FOR VERTICAL LEFT PARENTHESIS | The arc of the throw. It is a bracket for vertical Japanese writing, borrowed because it curves the right way. |
| ╯ (U+256F) | BOX DRAWINGS LIGHT ARC UP AND LEFT | The arm. Also a box-drawing character — a rounded corner of a frame. |
| ノ (U+30CE) | KATAKANA LETTER NO | The other arm. A Japanese letter, used because the stroke is a diagonal sweep. |
| □ (U+25A1) | WHITE SQUARE | The open mouth. Not a missing character — an actual square, on purpose. |
Two things worth pausing on. First, the flipped table is bold and the restored table is thin, and that is not an accident of the font: they are different characters, one from the heavy box-drawing set and one from the light one. Whoever built this originally chose the heavy version for the flip because a thrown table should land harder.
Second, the arc ︵ is a bracket meant to be read sideways. Japanese text set vertically needs brackets rotated ninety degrees, so Unicode has a whole block of them. One of those rotated brackets happens to look exactly like the path of a thrown object, and that is how it ended up in this emoticon.
And a small joke hidden in the put-back version: the eyes in ┬─┬ノ( º _ ºノ) are not degree signs. They are º, MASCULINE ORDINAL INDICATOR — the character Spanish and Portuguese use for 1º and 2º. It is slightly smaller and sits slightly higher than °, which is precisely why it reads as a calmer face.
Why yours looks crooked
The table flip is the one text face that depends on width, and that is where it goes wrong.
- The table only lines up in a monospace font. ┻━┻ is drawn as three boxes of identical width, meant to sit flush. In the proportional font most apps use for chat, the heavy horizontal is slightly wider than the corners and you get a small step in the middle. It is not your copy that is broken.
- The face and the table sit at different heights. Box-drawing characters are designed to fill their cell top to bottom; a parenthesis is not. In some fonts the table floats a pixel or two above the arm.
- Spacing gets eaten. Several versions use a space between ╯ and ︵. Apps that collapse repeated spaces will close that gap and the throw loses its arc.
The fix, when it matters: wrap it in backticks so it renders in the monospace font — `(╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻` — which works in Discord, Slack, Reddit and anywhere else that speaks Markdown. In a bio, where you cannot do that, use one of the shorter tables instead: ┻┳ holds together far better than a wide one.
What does not break it, notably, is the backslash problem that ruins the shrug — there is no backslash anywhere in a table flip. It pastes into Slack and Reddit exactly as copied, which the shrug does not.
What it means, and the half everyone forgets
The table flip is not really anger. It is performed anger — the whole point is that it is theatrical, and that everyone can see it is theatrical. Actual anger does not come with a stage prop.
Which is why the second half matters so much. Sending (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻ on its own leaves the room in the flipped state. Sending ┬─┬ノ( º _ ºノ) a moment later — or having someone else send it back to you — is the punchline: the tantrum was a bit, and now the furniture is fine.
Where it works:
- Reacting to a bug, a rule change, or a spreadsheet. Frustration at a thing rather than at a person.
- Replying to your own message. Flip in one line, put it back in the next. That is the most-used shape by far.
- Someone else’s flip. Answering a colleague’s flip with the put-back is one of the few pieces of internet etiquette that is genuinely charming.
Where it does not: aimed at a person. «(╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻» in reply to something a colleague said reads as being angry at them, however lightly you meant it — and unlike a spoken joke, it stays there in the thread. The rule is the same as for the shrug: fine about a situation, risky about a person.
Frequently asked questions
What does (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻ mean?
It is a person flipping a table over — performed frustration, not real anger. The face is on the left, the arms are ╯ and ノ, the arc ︵ is the throw, and ┻━┻ is the table upside down with its legs in the air.
How do I put the table back?
Send ┬─┬ノ( º _ ºノ). It is the same table the right way up — ┬ instead of ┻ — with a calm face. It is the standard reply to someone else’s flip, and to your own.
How do I type a table flip?
Nobody types it. Copy it from here, or save it as a text replacement: on iPhone, Settings → General → Keyboard → Text Replacement; on Windows, the emoji panel at Win + full stop has a kaomoji tab.
Why does my table look uneven?
Because the app is using a proportional font, where the box-drawing characters are not all the same width. Wrap it in backticks to force monospace, or use a shorter table like ┻┳.
Is there a table flip emoji?
No — 🤦 and 😤 are the nearest single emoji, and neither has a table. The table flip only exists as a kaomoji, which is exactly why it survived: it is made of ordinary characters and does not need any platform to support it.
What is the □ in the middle of the face?
An actual WHITE SQUARE (U+25A1), used as an open mouth. It is not a missing-character box — although it looks like one, which is a joke in itself.
The other famous faces have their own pages: the shrug for the backslash problem, the Lenny face for the eyebrows, cute kaomoji and sad kaomoji for moods. If you want to know what a kaomoji is at all, start at what is a kaomoji; the full library is on Fancymoji.
