2022 Was the Year of “Goblin Mode”
By Jim Miller
Language both reflects and helps to construct our lived reality. It is a crucial indicator of shifts in the mood and/or worldview of a culture. Thus, as we slid out of full pandemic mode into whatever the not-normal-but new-normal moment we are currently occupying, we’ve needed the words to capture our mood.
Enter “goblin mode,” a term that reflects our, as the Smithsonian puts it, “unapologetically self-indulgent, lazy, slovenly and greedy” present. As I noted in this space back in March when the term first crossed my radar screen, it hit a vein of unpleasantness that oozed the Zeitgeist:
How to characterize the mood of the present when just as we thought we were slithering our way toward endemic after the Omicron wave, with all our best hopes about better days after the end of the Trump era dying an excruciatingly slow death, we were greeted by a brutal war in Ukraine? Add nuclear annihilation to the list of existential threats along with catastrophic climate change and endless pandemic or just stop worrying and learn to love giving up? . . .
In sum, it appears, Americans have had enough talk about sacrifice and all that. Call it a legacy of the destruction of national norms under the previous management, but something seems to have changed even outside the loony circles of the trucker caravan right.
Kari Paul of The Guardian took a stab at capturing the spirit of the times in March, opining that we were entering a new cultural moment:
At some point in the stretch of days between the start of the pandemic’s third year and the feared launch of world war three, a new phrase entered the zeitgeist, a mysterious harbinger of an age to come: people were going “goblin mode” . . . Goblin mode is not a permanent identity . . . but a frame of mind . . . Call it a vibe shift or a logical progression into nihilism after years of pandemic induced disappointment, but goblin mode is here to stay.
Others in the fashion world heralded the term as the entry into a new chaotic, fragmented, sleezy, chic nihilism. Even in the business pages the diesel prices were described as going “goblin mode.”
Now, as we approach the year’s end, it appears I was on to something, as the first-ever Oxford English dictionary public vote for “word of the year” delivered the prize to “goblin mode” by an overwhelming margin. And the linguists agree:
“Goblin Mode really does speak to the times and the zeitgeist, and it is certainly a 2022 expression,” American linguist and lexicographer Ben Zimmer said at an event announcing the 2022 word of the year search. “... People are looking at social norms in new ways. It gives people the license to ditch social norms and embrace new ones.”
Now that we have lived through a year of goblin mode, like a season of The White Lotus, what might the new year have in store for us? I tremble to think. Grab your Donald Trump digital trading cards, hone your conspiracy theorizing skills, and get ready. Oh, brave new world, dear reader, with such creatures in it!
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Image adopted from Dictionary.com illustration