What Are Egosa and Pabusa? Searching Yourself vs. Your Oshi, and Etiquette When Your Oshi Reads

You search your oshi’s name and impressions and rumors all come up at once. How do “egosa” and “pabusa” differ? Here is how to use each word, and how much distance to keep when searching and posting.

What Egosa and Pabusa Mean

Egosa (エゴサ) is short for “ego search”: searching for posts about yourself, meaning your name, your work or your activities.

Pabusa (パブサ) is short for “public search”: searching for posts about someone or something other than yourself, such as your oshi, the official side or a topic.

When fans search their oshi’s name, it is strictly pabusa, though it tends to be called egosa.

Searching for yourself

Egosa

• Done by the person or official side
• Own reputation and impressions

Searching for someone else

Pabusa

• Done by fans
• Oshi's reputation, genba reactions, reports

Fans searching an oshi's name are strictly doing pabusa.

Wobbly Wording and Differences Between Fandom Spheres

In everyday speech “egosa-ing my oshi” is also widely used, and the meaning comes across without trouble. It’s a natural change in language: people stopped noticing the “ego” (self) in ego search, and the meaning widened to searching on social media in general. Still, knowing the distinction helps you read the nuance of terms like “egosa koukou” (openly announcing you egosa) and “egosa-zei” (the egosa crowd).

Attitudes also differ between spheres. In the streamer and VTuber sphere, it is well established that the person does egosa and picks up impressions during streams, so the sense that “it will be read” is especially strong. In spheres centered on media appearances, such as actors and voice actors, you can’t tell whether the person does egosa unless they say so, and people talk about it with the distance of “they might be reading.”

Examples

• “Doing pabusa after the show is my daily routine. I want to read everyone’s impressions.”
• “My oshi announced they’re an egosa person, so I’ve started paying attention to how I write my impressions.”
• “I pabusa the reputation of new merch before deciding whether to buy.”
• “They said, ‘I read all of yesterday’s impressions through egosa,’ and the timeline quietly stirred.”
• “I thought I’d masked the name, but predictive text spelled it out in full, so I quietly fixed it after posting.”

Posting Manners in the Age of “Your Oshi Reads It”

In an age when many entertainers, VTubers and authors openly do egosa, a fan’s post is an open letter that may reach the person.

1. Write impressions in a form that’s fine to be read. Praise arrives as it is, and so does harsh criticism
2. Keep negative impressions out of search. Masking the name or writing on a locked account (kagi-aka) is an established way of showing consideration for the person
3. Enjoy being found. A like from the person on your fan art or impressions, the “egosa discovery,” is a fansa (fan service) unique to the social media age

A Checklist Before You Post

After you write an impression and before you hit post, take a few seconds to check that it would be fine reaching an oshi who does egosa.

• Is the content fine even if the person reads it exactly as written?
• If you’re writing criticism, did you mask the name or put it on a locked account?
• Has the mask not reverted through predictive text?
• If it includes spoilers, did you check the release date and warning note?
• Is it not in a form that quotes another fan’s post to argue?
• Are ticket seat numbers or QR codes not visible in the photo?

Common Misconceptions

• People who do egosa aren’t self-absorbed. For a creator or performer, egosa is practical work that combines collecting impressions, checking reactions to projects and catching misinformation early
• Masking a name doesn’t mean you can write anything. Masking is a tool of consideration, not a license for slander

Using Pabusa Well, and Self-Defense

• Collecting reports from the genba, to relive shows you couldn’t attend
• Checking reviews of actual merch
• Getting a feel for the mood of a fandom sphere (also useful for watching before you join)

On the other hand, pabusa is also an act of running into things you don’t want to see. Criticism of your oshi, spoilers and topics you dislike inevitably mix into search results. The key to enjoying it for the long run is to pair it with self-defense techniques: using search operators to exclude words you don’t want to see, and taking a break from searching when times are hard. Exposing other people’s posts you find through pabusa, or going around rebutting criticism in quote posts, is asking for trouble. “Search is only for looking; don’t bring fights in” is the safe zone.

1. 01Search for a purposeReports, merch reviews, mood
2. 02Set up defensesSearch operators
3. 03Take breaksSkip searching in hard periods
4. 04Bring no fightsNo exposing, no quote rebuttals

Search is only for looking.

Notes From The Oshi Lab: The Voices You See in Search Are Only a Part

The culture of openly announcing egosa has fundamentally changed the distance between fans and the person. Impressions have gone from “conversation among fans” to “feedback to the person,” and voices on social media now connect directly to projects and improvements. From a company’s viewpoint, pabusa, searching for customers’ raw voices, is the cheapest and fastest market research. But the voices that turn up in search skew toward the highly engaged, and remembering the silent majority prevents misreading. Fan culture also has the consideration of search-avoidance (kensaku-yoke), deliberately keeping posts out of search, so what you see in search is gentler than reality. On top of that, the cast of search results changes with the time of day and the way results are displayed. Searching the same word in the morning and at night can put a different crowd’s posts in front of you, so both those who post and fans need to be careful not to take a single search result for public opinion itself.

Related Terms

Kensaku-yoke and masking / Reports (repo) / Ota-aka / Fansa / Enjou