Danbooru

Doyagao vs. Smug?

Posted under Tags

Based on the description of doyagao and smug, I can't really see the difference between the tags. The wiki page for doyagao describes it as "a facial expression conveying a self-satisfied, cocky, or smug attitude", while smug is described as "exhibiting or feeling great or offensive satisfaction with oneself or with one's situation", which sound synonymous with each other.
Is one a subset of the other? The same? Different?

If someone could provide clear examples (and possibly put it on their respective description pages) it would be appreciated.

I needed to look up "doyagao" for translation some time back, and from what I learned then, it was essentially the same meaning as "smug". I think combining the tags probably wouldn't be a bad idea, and an alias might be in order.

indexador2 said:

Based on the description of doyagao and smug, I can't really see the difference between the tags. The wiki page for doyagao describes it as "a facial expression conveying a self-satisfied, cocky, or smug attitude", while smug is described as "exhibiting or feeling great or offensive satisfaction with oneself or with one's situation", which sound synonymous with each other.
Is one a subset of the other? The same? Different?

If someone could provide clear examples (and possibly put it on their respective description pages) it would be appreciated.

"Doyagao" basically means "howzat-face" ("Doya" is "douda", "how's that", but in Kansaiben). So, to be pedantic, it's a specific kind of smugface that carries an implicit "howzat" ( something along the lines of "I did great, didn't I?", basically). It is usually paired with sticking one's chest out.

There is significant overlap, because most cases of smug are associated with complacent behavior or 'excessive' self-pride anyway. There are two notable exceptions I can think of though; the schadenfreude kind of smug ("serves you right!") and the knowing look smug ("I know"/"You aren't above it all", e.g. post #3413510), both of which don't carry the implicit "howzat".

Oh, and sometimes you have light traces of smug (the cocky self-assured look) that don't quite cross into doyagao territory yet (not "punchable" yet, in other words), like in post #3460524.

Now with all that said, I am not entirely sure the distinction is important here, or even that the tags are used properly, so I'm not altogether against an alias or implication.

In my case, I only add the doyagao tag where the word ドヤ explicitly appears, usually as a sound effect but often in the artist's description. To me, it feels like a specific slang meme, rather than just a description for a smug expression. As such, I would say doyagao is a subset of smug.

I don't agree with an alias. An implication would be fine, but not all smug faces are doyagao.

We have several other meme-esque expression tags (gesugao, tehepero), they might be subsets but they specifically refer to something. Aliasing it means there's no way to tell apart a generic smug expression like post #69086 from post #4031030, which is what doyagao is supposed to mean.

Examples:
post #3878187
post #3873729
post #4066965

It's very distinct to me. It doesn't help that translated tags pull any smug expression, since doya just means generic smug in japanese, but the original "doyagao" is very well defined and easily recognizable.

Removing the translated tags might help in restoring order to the tag, rather than just nuking it.

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