Post poggers faces from across video games and other media. This thread is inspired by Insert Credit episode 346 - America! Hamburger!
This one is from Slam Dunk, episode 2:
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Here is that Australia’s Got Talent reaction face poggers dude.
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Mommy…sonic is pogging
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I voiced that statement and was told except the ones who are girls
I was told it’s the whiskers. Yellow for boys and white for girls.
My son is discovering how to be smug…
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oh yeah, all magicarp are definitely not boys. I just wanted to call them “the big boy” and then double down in joke style
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I did not want to take anything away from your joke, just being fact checked by a five year old made me go
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That’s definitely soyfacing
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what is the difference?
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Subtle differences in inflection, mainly of the perceived foolishness of the one holding the expression in question.
Forewarning: all of the below analysis intentionally fails to take ironic performance into the equation.
Pogging and soyfacing are both expressions of wide eyed and open-mouthed shock and wonderment which are put on to express something to an implied audience, but there is an element of externality and retroactive designation to pogging, and more performativity and thus insincere contrivance to the soyface. Pogging is an external contextual layer applied to an expression on the subject by the audience–one does not pog actively, one puts on an expression in that semi-involuntary way we do in the midst of an emotional response to something, and then the status of pogging is deliberated upon/intuited by a craven audience, and thus the status of pogging is applied retroactively. Arguably, we are doing it in this very thread–we’re retroactively determining an expression be “pogging.” Soyfacing in contrast is an expression one puts on intentionally to perform the emotion of shock and wonderment, or, perhaps in parallel to that, soyfacing is an involuntary action that betrays a certain sort of immaturity or foolishness. One soyfaces in order to draw children’s attention to YouTube thumbnails, or, one soyfaces sincerely during the filming of one’s reaction video to the premiere of the trailer of the newest Marvel movie, thus involuntarily embracing a most grievous, offputting cringe.
A good question to also cover here would be, why is Morte soyfacing and not pogging? This a bit unfair to Morte since he can’t make any other kind of expression but it resembles soyfacing more because of Morte’s unavoidable big wide eyed expression and huge slack open jaw, on account of him not having eyelids or lips. Soyfacing isn’t always this wide eyed and open mouthed, but I suppose the reason Morte looks like he’s soyfacing is because of how unnaturally wide open his eyes and mouth are. For Morte the reason is supernatural but for regular humans it gives the air of someone forcing their eyes wide and their mouth open to an unnatural degree, in order to contrive a certain emotion to their expression (especially one that manipulatively draws the attention of children when in a YouTube thumbnail).
I hate to dredge it up because that game came a long way and Sean Murray is probably a perfectly nice guy (not going to bother doing my due diligence here tbh) but the No Man’s Sky Gone Gold photos are archetypical soyfacing, just on account of how you can just see how wide open and lockjawed and eye popping and forced his expression is in these pictures (full disclosure, this is a set of photos and I intentionally chose the one where his eyes are open the widest):
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I appreciate the detailed response.
Are we sure this isn’t just a side effect of growing up watching Animaniacs and The Mask?
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Yeah, I dunno, the unfortunate layer to this whole discussion is that I think both of these terms have pretty identifiable roots in toxic online culture and the various ways in which immature men online tear each other down and perform masculinity in a really unhealthy and hostile and self defeating way. Should be said that the designation of “soyfacing” especially is pretty much always meant to be derisive–in case it isn’t known to people the “soy” in the term soyfacing is referencing the whole soy beta male thing.
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