도우너 어서오고
TL;DR · Origin‘Dooner, come on in’ (‘Dooner eoseo-ogo’) is the flat, unenthusiastic greeting Dooly gives his friend Dooner. The source is not Kim Su-jung’s or…
Origin
‘Dooner, come on in’ (‘Dooner eoseo-ogo’) is the flat, unenthusiastic greeting Dooly gives his friend Dooner. The source is not Kim Su-jung’s original comic Dooly the Little Dinosaur but a parody by the webtoon artist Eongdeongguk, which keeps the original characters’ appearance while replacing their speech and outlook with those of a Korean internet forum. Its Dooly is not a children’s cartoon hero but a smirking figure forever testing the line.
Lines from that parody became memes wholesale. Alongside ‘Oi Dooly, Dooner, come on in’ came ‘that’s crossing a line’ and ‘watch how you conduct yourself’. Since the humour comes from the gap between the gentle original artwork and the brazenness of the dialogue, the format lent itself to keeping the drawing and swapping only the speech bubble.
Spread
The vector was emoticons. On August 2nd, 2020, panels from the parody were cut into an ‘Arcacon’ emoticon set on the Korean forum Arcalive; that crossed to DCInside, where a DCcon set called ‘Good Dooly’ was made on August 18th, 2020, and the phrase took off. The ‘eoseo-ogo’ register settled first in male-dominated forums, then moved onto Facebook and other social media.
As the trend grew, the ‘eoseo-ogo’ lines were released as official KakaoTalk emoticons — imported back into the commercial mainstream. The trend outlet Careet ran an explainer on it as ‘the Dooly meme kids use these days’, which is to say it had become a generational marker.
Usage
- An offhand greeting when a friend enters a chatroom — ‘X, come on in’
- Summoning or calling someone out
- Paired with ‘that’s crossing a line’ and ‘watch yourself’ as a set of smirking comebacks
The point is the casual, clipped ending: not the polite ‘please come in’ but the blunt ‘come on in’. It carries the sense of pretending to welcome someone while not being especially glad to see them, which is why it only works between friends.
Sources
- Careet, ‘Why Is This Trending? The origin of the “Dooner, come on in” Dooly meme kids use these days’ — usage context and spread (part of the article is behind a paywall)
- Namuwiki, ‘Aegi Gongryong Dooly’ — that it is Eongdeongguk’s parody; the Arcalive emoticon set of August 2nd, 2020 and the ‘Good Dooly’ DCcon of August 18th, 2020; the KakaoTalk emoticon release
- Namuwiki, ‘Eongdeongguk’ — the artist, and the companion lines that spread with it
- Trend A Word no. 32, ‘Eoseo-ogo’ — an explanation of the phrase’s register and use
