Looking through the various "looking at x" tags, we have the well-established looking at viewer and looking at another, then there are various looking at body parts tags and looking at animal... and a whole bunch of looking at various object tags, but no overarching looking at object.

Personally I believe that any act of looking at something in the image is worthy of a tag in itself, and thus propose making a looking at object tag to cover looking at any inanimate object, while avoiding having to make a mass of looking_at_food, looking_at_headphones and looking_at_snow_bunny* style tags (which themselves would be useless for finding images where a character is simply looking at anything).

Some of the looking_at_x tags have distinct enough implications that they should keep their tags and these should be implicated to looking at object, such as looking at phone, looking at mirror, looking at screen, looking at watch and looking at map. But others, like looking at cup, could probably just be folded in to the general looking at object tag. I would also argue that something like reading should imply looking at object - this may look like it would flood the tag, but there are a lot of images of someone looking at something that currently aren't tagged to represent this in any way so it wouldn't in the long run.

For the tag to count, the object would have to be visible in the image, and the character would have to be visibly looking at the object in question - neither of these things should be merely implied.

*There's a surprisingly large number of images with this one.

It might be the case that making this tag would be worthwhile, but a part of your argument that it should is unfounded.
I've looked through the tag listing for "looking_at_*". The tags that do not correspond to living beings generally tend to correspond to either a visual display/visually significant type of object or to a particularly significant body part. I'll give some examples:
looking_at_phone - This is usually for when they're using their phone for something other than a phone call, rather than just looking at it.
looking_at_mirror - Visually significant
looking_at_screen - Visual display
looking_at_watch - Visual display
Looking_at_book used to exist, but all of the posts tagged with it were just someone reading, so I've re-tagged all of them. Edit: I've also replaced "looking_at_paper" with "paper reading".

looking_at_breasts and looking_at_penis - Both have notable sexual significance.
looking_at_hand and looking_at_hands - Hands are very important, in the same way that they set humans apart from other species. These tags tend to be on images where characters are looking for or at something that is in, is on, or should be in their hand(s), so it has a specific significance. Because people use their hands to interact with things very often, this tag comes up a lot. In many of the cases where these two tags are used, whether they're used correctly or not, the subjects of the tag often aren't looking at their hands themselves, but rather an object in or on their hands. This makes them similar, but more specific than the tag you're suggesting.

All other tags starting with "looking_at_" are tagged on under 10 posts without exception. Some of them are frivolous, as you've pointed out. It could be argued that these tags should be deprecated and replaced with an overarching looking_at_object tag, but it might just be best to get rid of them without replacement. However, at the time of writing, the tag "looking_at_snow_bunny" does not exist.
But in conclusion, none of the populated "looking_at_*" tags correspond to mundane things.

That... wasn't my argument for the tag at all. The third and fourth paragraphs were about how the proposed tag would work and how it would interact with existing ones. There's no argument there to be unfounded.

The point of the second half of the second paragraph was to say that this solution was a better way of dealing with the proposal than making a mass of looking_at_x tags - none of the three tags mentioned there exist, nor was I proposing they should do (quite the opposite in fact).

With that said, I support the idea of replacing the miscellaneous, mundane "looking_at_*" tags with the overarching "looking_at_object". There is already a precedent for this with the holding tag, as noted by its wiki entry.
looking_at_cup, looking_at_doll, looking_at_gun, and looking_at_airplane should all be replaced, in my opinion.
looking_at_map, looking_at_clock, and looking_at_camera all seem visually significant to me.

skylightcrystal said:

That... wasn't my argument for the tag at all. ...

Zurreak said:

... a part of your argument ...

If I misinterpreted, I apologize. However, I also never said that was your entire argument.

Zurreak said:

If I misinterpreted, I apologize. However, I also never said that was your entire argument.

Nor did I say you did. However you said it was a part of my argument when it wasn't any of my argument at all. Nothing you said refutes anything I said at all - in fact it supports exactly what I was proposing.

looking_at_food

I'm actually surprised that this one doesn't already exist. There are enough images of characters staring longingly at food (or not) that this tag could be populated quite a bit better than you'd expect.