Is "Cigarette in Mouth" a Good Tag Idea?

BUR #26199 is pending approval.

mass update favgroup:32125 -> cigarette_in_mouth

For the past while, the fact that we don't have a tag specifically for cigarettes held in the mouth has bothered me. Yeah, we have holding cigarette and mouth hold, but cigarettes in mouths felt so ubiquitous that the fact we didn't have a tag for it specifically honestly kinda surprised me. So I made a favgroup of all the applicable posts I could find on the first twenty pages of cigarette, which is...quite a lot. I'm not sure how big these tag idea favgroups should ideally be, but if 163 is under it, I'm sure I could get it to that point without much effort.

Right now, this BUR serves to gauge interest in the idea, as I don't want to introduce a specific mouth hold subset all willy-nilly. But I do think it could be beneficial to some.

What would the difference be between cigarette in mouth and cigarette + smoking.
I can only think of having an unlit cigarette in your mouth, which doesn't seem like a big tag (since The Fault In Our Stars fans haven't found this website)

This is something I thought about before making this BUR, actually. And the answer is actually something like that. I don't think people searching smoking are typically going to want to see things like post #7547051 or post #7514376, where the character clearly only has the cigarette there in order to look cool as opposed to actually, ya know, smoking it. This tag could act as somewhere to place posts that don't seem to fit the smoking tag, but the character stills has a cigarette in their mouth. I could actually find a few more examples of that phenomenon in just the twenty pages of cigarette I searched at the time, so it could be more likely than you think.

Smoking also encompasses non-cigarette items such as joints, cigars, and smoking pipes, as well as many posts where the cigarette is NOT in the characters mouth (post #7557413, post #7553213, post #7549330, post #7546986)

An equivalent search would be cigarette mouth_hold.

gfz said:

What would the difference be between cigarette in mouth and cigarette + smoking.
I can only think of having an unlit cigarette in your mouth, which doesn't seem like a big tag (since The Fault In Our Stars fans haven't found this website)

Do we not tag characters holding lit cigarettes as smoking? post #7552708 for instance. I guess it could be a way to assure that? It could also rule out cigarette butts.

I agree its just cigarette + mouth_hold though.

zetsubousensei said:

Do we not tag characters holding lit cigarettes as smoking? post #7552708 for instance. I guess it could be a way to assure that? It could also rule out cigarette butts.

I agree its just cigarette + mouth_hold though.

I wouldn't have thought smoking was applicable to post #7552708. If I was deciding how the tag should be used, I would say smoking should only apply to posts in which it is depicting the act. In this post, she probably was smoking it at some point, but it's still possible she's holding it for someone else. Compare with HeeroWingZero's examples:

HeeroWingZero said:

Smoking also encompasses non-cigarette items such as joints, cigars, and smoking pipes, as well as many posts where the cigarette is NOT in the characters mouth (post #7557413, post #7553213, post #7549330, post #7546986)

Of those four posts, post #7557413 and post #7549330 show smoke coming out of the mouth, so the only reasonable conclusion is that they were smoking. The other two don't have that element, but the way they're holding it makes it unlikely they're not smoking, and I can see arguments for both tagging and not tagging them as such.

Blank_User said:

I wouldn't have thought smoking was applicable to post #7552708. If I was deciding how the tag should be used, I would say smoking should only apply to posts in which it is depicting the act. In this post, she probably was smoking it at some point, but it's still possible she's holding it for someone else. Compare with HeeroWingZero's examples:

Of those four posts, post #7557413 and post #7549330 show smoke coming out of the mouth, so the only reasonable conclusion is that they were smoking. The other two don't have that element, but the way they're holding it makes it unlikely they're not smoking, and I can see arguments for both tagging and not tagging them as such.

I would 100% expect to find images like post #7552708 under the smoking tag. To try and rule such images out seems silly when the character is clearly holding a lit cigarette as if they're smoking.

GreyOmega said:

I would 100% expect to find images like post #7552708 under the smoking tag. To try and rule such images out seems silly when the character is clearly holding a lit cigarette as if they're smoking.

Yeah, I think it's perfectly reasonable to assume that someone holding a lit cigarette is the owner and user of that cigarette. If what we see in the picture is a solo character holding a lit cigarette, then what we see is a solo character in the act of smoking.

blindVigil said:

Yeah, I think it's perfectly reasonable to assume that someone holding a lit cigarette is the owner and user of that cigarette. If what we see in the picture is a solo character holding a lit cigarette, then what we see is a solo character in the act of smoking.

My point wasn't about who owned the cigarette; that was just an example. My assumption was that the act of smoking would be limited to inhaling and exhaling the smoke, which is why I pointed out those two among HeeroWingZero's examples (the other two looked like they were somewhere in between those and post #7552708).

To use an analogy, post #2196449 is an example of boxing and not punching. I thought it would make sense to use smoking in the same way as punching (a series of discrete actions), but it seems like everyone else is saying we currently use it more like boxing (a continuous activity).

I would think post #7552708 would be sufficiently covered by holding cigarette, so unless we're using it as an umbrella tag for various holding tags (cigars, bongs, etc.), it seems like it's use for those cases with mere holding to be redundant and make it harder to find posts with the character actually taking a puff.

On the other hand, it would make sense to tag them with smoking to make blacklisting it easier since it can be a turn-off for some and they might not want to see their favorite characters smoking, though I have a feeling that isn't the actual reason why we're tagging it that way.

Blank_User said:

My assumption was that the act of smoking would be limited to inhaling and exhaling the smoke

That would be like not tagging eating if you can't see the food currently being inside the mouth.

Nameless_Contributor said:

That would be like not tagging eating if you can't see the food currently being inside the mouth.

No it wouldn't. If a character has a visible cheek bulge (:T, :I) while holding food with a bite in it, it's obvious they are in the process of eating and it makes sense to tag them as such. The posts with characters just holding a cigarette would be more similar to images like post #7561996, in which the characters are almost certainly going to eat the burgers they're holding, but they're not in the process of eating them yet, just as a character merely holding a cigarette is almost certainly going to smoke it, but is not in the process of smoking it at that specific point in time.

If someone is holding a lit cigarette they are clearly smoking. Your example post should be tagged eating.

This includes characters actively eating, about to eat, or having just finished eating.

Nameless_Contributor said:

If someone is holding a lit cigarette they are clearly smoking. Your example post should be tagged eating.

I stand corrected about the current use of eating, but that still doesn't explain why we're using these tags for the general activity rather than the action. If you want to say "they are clearly smoking" in reference to the general activity, that's fine. But that doesn't change the fact the cigarette is not being smoked at the moment in post #7552708, just as the burgers are not being eaten at the moment in post #7561996.

That said, I'm not going to insist we change how we use the tags when everyone else is accustomed to that particular usage. I just wanted to understand why we treat them differently than other discrete actions. At any rate, I updated the smoking wiki to make it clear it can also be used for those kind of posts.

Because if I'm holding a lit cigarette, you would say I'm smoking even if I'm in between puffs. When I'm sitting down at the dinner table, you would say I'm eating even when food is not currently in my mouth.

Blank_User said:

If a character has a visible cheek bulge (:T, :I) while holding food with a bite in it, it's obvious they are in the process of eating and it makes sense to tag them as such.

What you're looking for, and which has a much more strict usage case, is chewing. Chewing is usually eating but eating isn't always chewing because it's perfectly acceptable to tag based on context for the latter. Smoking would be a lot closer to eating in application, and a potential way to search for the specific, ongoing action would be smoking cigarette_in_mouth, just like there are 1052 posts under chewing eating.

gfz said:

Because if I'm holding a lit cigarette, you would say I'm smoking even if I'm in between puffs. When I'm sitting down at the dinner table, you would say I'm eating even when food is not currently in my mouth.

I literally described that in my previous posts. I know they can be used to describe the activity in normal conversation. I was asking about why it was decided to make the eating and smoking tags apply to the general activity instead of the specific action.

John_Fantasy_XIV said:

What you're looking for, and which has a much more strict usage case, is chewing. Chewing is usually eating but eating isn't always chewing because it's perfectly acceptable to tag based on context for the latter. Smoking would be a lot closer to eating in application, and a potential way to search for the specific, ongoing action would be smoking cigarette_in_mouth, just like there are 1052 posts under chewing eating.

Thank you for the explanation. I did actually consider the chewing tag shortly after my last post.

There are over 70,000 eating posts. I would expect chewing eating to have a much higher count than this, even considering how broadly eating can be applied. I'll see if there are any posts I can tag with chewing sometime in the future.

Going back to the thread topic, cigarette in mouth would definitely not be sufficient on it's own because, as mentioned before, there are other implements that could be used. It was also mentioned that any such tag would already be covered by the implement's tag + mouth hold. I think these should be covered by a single tag if possible. Rather than focusing on smoking specifically, we could make a tag for oral fixation devices in general. They are visually distinguishable from other mouth hold examples because of the general shape of the object and how it's being held. This tag would include cigarettes, but also toothpicks and lollipops. I can't really think of a good name for it, though.

It would also be nice if the physical act of smoking had its own tag (a smoking equivalent of chewing) to make it easier to find those posts.