Goblin Mode等我两周先！
This year, Oxford Languages, the creator of the Oxford English Dictionary, titled "goblin mode" as the 2022 Word of the Year, meaning it best reflected the ethos and mood of the past 12 months.
The slang term is defined as a "type of behavior which is unapologetically self-indulgent, lazy, slovenly, or greedy, typically in a way that rejects social norms or expectations."
"It captured the prevailing mood of individuals who rejected the idea of returning to 'normal life', or rebelled against the increasingly unattainable aesthetic standards and unsustainable lifestyles exhibited on social media," OUP wrote in a press release.
01 CNN
(CNN) — As you read this, look around. Are you still in bed? Are there piles of clothes and takeout food boxes strewn across the floor? Do you have chip crumbs on your sheets? Have you broken your self-care routine more times than you can count? Do you not even care? If so, you might already be in “goblin mode” – chosen by the public as the 2022 Oxford word of the year.
According to Oxford University Press (OUP), publishers behind the Oxford English Dictionary, the slang term refers to a type of behavior which is “unapologetically self-indulgent, lazy, slovenly, or greedy, typically in a way that rejects social norms or expectations” – traits that may have become familiar to many during lockdown.
Social media can portray idealized versions of self-improvement, from waking at 5 a.m. and drinking a green smoothie, to keeping a journal, exercising and planning your weekly meal prep.
That era may be on the way out. In its place is goblin mode – the opposite of trying to better yourself.
The OUP word of the year – also known as the Oxford word of the year – was chosen by the public for the first time. A group of lexicographers at OUP gave people a choice of: “Goblin mode,” “metaverse,” and “#IStandWith.”
“Goblin mode” triumphed, racking up 318,956 votes – 93% of the total. “Metaverse” came second and “#IStandWith” came third.
Casper Grathwohl, president of OUP’s Oxford Languages, said in a press release Monday that the “level of engagement with the campaign caught us totally by surprise.”
“Given the year we’ve just experienced, ‘Goblin mode’ resonates with all of us who are feeling a little overwhelmed at this point. It’s a relief to acknowledge that we’re not always the idealized, curated selves that we’re encouraged to present on our Instagram and TikTok feeds,” he said.
ljubaphoto/E+/Getty Images
"Goblin mode" was a resounding favorite among voters.
The rise of ‘goblin mode’
The term was first used in 2009 but went viral on social media earlier this year, OUP said. It shot to prominence after a fake headline claimed that the rapper formerly known as Kanye West and Julia Fox broke up after she “went goblin mode.”
“The term then rose in popularity over the months following as Covid lockdown restrictions eased in many countries and people ventured out of their homes more regularly,” according to the OUP.
“Seemingly, it captured the prevailing mood of individuals who rejected the idea of returning to ‘normal life’, or rebelled against the increasingly unattainable aesthetic standards and unsustainable lifestyles exhibited on social media.”
The term’s popularity may also be linked to the growth of new social media sites like BeReal, where users are invited once a day at random to post a photo of whatever they’re doing. Goodbye carefully curated social media feeds. Hello goblin mode.
The release gives examples of examples of when the term has been used. Among the most vivid was quoted in The Guardian: “Goblin mode is like when you wake up at 2am and shuffle into the kitchen wearing nothing but a long t-shirt to make a weird snack, like melted cheese on saltines.”
“People are embracing their inner goblin, and voters choosing ‘goblin mode’ as the Word of the Year tells us the concept is likely here to stay,” added Grathwohl.
02 theguardian
The term embraces the comforts of depravity and a direct departure from the ‘cottagecore’ influence of early pandemic days
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”.
The term embraces the comforts of depravity: spending the day in bed watching 90 Day Fiancé on mute while scrolling endlessly through social media, pouring the end of a bag of chips in your mouth; downing Eggo toaster oven waffles with hot sauce over the sink because you can’t be bothered to put them on a plate. Leaving the house in your pajamas and socks only to get a single Diet Coke from the bodega.
Inherent to the phrase is the idea that it can be switched on and off, said Dave McNamee, a self-described “real-life goblin” whose tweet about goblin mode recently went viral. Goblin mode is not a permanent identity, he said, but a frame of mind.
“Goblin mode is like when you wake up at 2am and shuffle into the kitchen wearing nothing but a long T-shirt to make a weird snack, like melted cheese on saltines,” he said. “It’s about a complete lack of aesthetic. Because why would a goblin care what they look like? Why would a goblin care about presentation?”
First appearing on Twitter as early as 2009, “goblin mode” has also been linked by some to a viral Reddit post from a user claiming to secretly walk around their house “like a goblin”, collecting trinkets and “making goblin noises”.
But according to Google Trends it started to rise in popularity in early February and spiked after a doctored headline attributed a quote with the phrase to Kanye West muse and it-girl of the moment Julia Fox.
“Just for the record. I have never used the term ‘goblin mode’,” Fox later clarified in an Instagram story. The Twitter user who made up the Fox quote as a joke said that while the headline was fake, she believes goblin mode is a very real phenomenon.
“Goblin mode is kind of the opposite of trying to better yourself,” says Juniper, who declined to share her last name. “I think that’s the kind of energy that we’re giving going into 2022 – everyone’s just kind of wild and insane right now.”
On TikTok, #GoblinMode is affixed to videos of everything from “smoking weed alone and getting scared”, to “not taking your meds”, and “hoarding weird shit just in case you run out”. In other videos, it is associated with women wearing no makeup and mismatched sweat suits, speaking confessional-style into the camera.
The trend represents a direct departure from the hyper-curated “cottagecore” influence of early pandemic days, a standout trend of 2020 that included pastel colors, bucolic scenery and the showcasing of wholesome homemaking skills such as baking and embroidery. Cottagecore thrived under the wistful ethos of making the best of what many people assumed would be only a few boring weeks at home in 2020.
But as the pandemic wears on endlessly, and the chaos of current events worsens, people feel cheated by the system and have rejected such goals. Peter Hayes, a Bay Area tech worker who says he and his friends have jokingly called themselves goblins, said the term has taken off as the pandemic eliminated the need to keep up appearances.
“At home there’s no social pressure to follow norms, so you sort of lose the habit,” he says. “There’s also a feeling that we’re all fucked, so why bother?”
On TikTok, #goblinmode is often accompanied by the adjacent phrase #feralgirlsummer. That hashtag has 366,000 views and features videos of users proclaiming to be the opposite of “that girl” – a highly curated aesthetic popular on TikTok in recent years.
There are nearly 3bn views on videos using #thatgirl, many of them show influencers organizing pristine refrigerators full of freshly cut vegetables, making organic breakfasts, and doing elaborate skincare routines. “You have to start romanticizing your life,” they tell us as they make green tea lattes at home.
The trend “sets an unrealistic standard for girls to think that if they aren’t waking up early to exercise, their lives are not put together”, one blog indictment of “that girl” culture reads.
“I have absolutely no interest in being ‘that girl’,” one video with 160,000 views says. “I will never wake up at 5am and drink green juices and be hyper-organized. I will instead be in 4am Reddit holes, Diet Coke first thing in the morning, [and] fistfuls of raw pasta as a snack.”
Goblin mode ‘is kind of the opposite of trying to better yourself’, said Juniper. Photograph: Lorenz Aschoff/Getty Images/EyeEm
Though they do not explicitly use the term “goblin mode”, videos expressing similar ideologies have been rising in popularity. “My body is a garbage can with an expiration date and I got no time for healthy shit,” one with 90,000 views says. “I love barely holding on to my sanity and making awful selfish choices and participating in unhealthy habits and coping mechanisms,” said another with 325,000 views.
The goblin mode umbrella can encapsulate many kinds of aesthetics and behaviors, says Cat Marnell, an author who has been tweeting extensively in recent weeks about entering goblin mode herself.
Although many people tweeting about goblin mode have characterized it as an almost spiritual-level embrace of our most debased tendencies, Marnell says there is “healthy goblin mode and destructive goblin mode”. For her, it embodies a certain air of harmless mischief.
“The power of goblin mode is that it takes over your body,” she says. “It is a scrambling of the brain. It’s when you act crazy, and you enter a very mythological space – you want to jump on the back of a salamander and make trouble.”
Call it a vibe shift or a logical progression into nihilism after years of pandemic induced disappointment, but goblin mode is here to stay. And why shouldn’t it? Who were we trying to impress, anyway? As one #goblinmode audio says: “If you can’t handle me in goblin mode, you don’t deserve me at my slay.”
“It is cool to be a goblin,” Marnell says. “Everyone is so perfect all the time online, it is good to get in touch with the strange little creature that lives inside you.”
03 thetimes
Would you like tea or coffee?” It took a moment to realise that the flight attendant was talking to me, cocooned as I was in two British Airway fleece blankets. One had a crusty corner where I’d wiped my mouth after my lunch; the other was draped partly across the seat next to me, covered in crumbs. Don’t mind me: I’m flying in economy — or as the internet will have it, in goblin mode.
Until last week, when “goblin mode” was crowned the Oxford English Dictionary’s word of the year, I thought that wearing scuzzy clothes, scoffing a multipack of Frazzles and watching the entire first series of Friends in the wrong order was entirely unnoteworthy behaviour at 35,000ft. Now, suspiciously, it’s a trend. There are thousands of posts on Instagram tagged #goblinmode, mostly depicting people slouching in big hoodies or wrapped in duvets, in a correction to the typical overfiltered, unrealistic social-media aesthetic. But — isn’t that just flying?
The official dictionary definition of goblin mode is “unapologetically self-indulgent, lazy, slovenly, or greedy, typically in a way that rejects social norms or expectations”. Most budget-airline passengers would mistake that for a code of conduct. I’d consider it standard behaviour when turning right — especially the “unapologetically lazy” part.
Flying involves a few sacred hours during which you can sit in the dark, literally strapped in, while people deliver food and drink to your seat every few hours. You can doze, watch TV box sets or — as my neighbour did on a recent flight — play Candy Crush for six solid hours. Calories and alcohol units strangely don’t seem to count, and nobody can contact you. There’s something extremely comforting about outsourcing all decisions about your health and wellbeing to the flight crew: all passengers need to do is sit in their assigned seat. You’re positively encouraged to stay in your seat, eat junk and watch crap telly — if that makes me a goblin, fine; I think it’s brilliant.
My plane “uniform” consists of worn leggings, a washed-until-gossamer black T-shirt and my university hoodie. It’s an outfit that has served me loyally on journeys this year, from France to Florida and from Devon to Dubai. Take it from this slob: it is insane to wear your Sunday best to eat a foil pouch of cheesy pasta; it’s madness to wear anything but your joggers to drink plane “coffee” that, with one bump of turbulence, ends up down your front anyway. Those are the rules and I won’t hear another word about it.
On my most recent flight, with my two-year-old, I wore a tie-dye top sporting a splodge of yoghurt, and spent the two hours in the air feeding him everything from Tuc crackers to Wotsits to stop him kicking the seat in front. We disembarked in a cloud of orange dust, but with not one ounce of shame.
Still, while goblin-mode devotees are becoming an increasingly regular sight, they do sometimes face backlash. The latest example came last week, when one airline passenger took off her shoes and fell asleep with her feet propped between the armrest in front and the window, only to wake up to find that the child sitting there had doodled with a felt tip on her white socks. This was shared on the popular Instagram page Passenger Shaming, with one person commenting: “Keep your shoes on you savage.”
The group has documented plenty of other goblin monstrosities — bare feet hanging over the seat in front; passengers walking sans socks to the loo (at which even I would draw the line).
Why are tourists behaving so badly?
What is it about planes that seem to invite etiquette horrors that are somehow only acceptable on board? I also recline my seat on a long flight; have a bad habit of falling asleep on strangers’ shoulders; and always, always clog up the overhead lockers with baby guff after huffing onto the plane as quickly as possible. When phone calls are allowed on EU flights — as is proposed from next summer — I’m sure that plenty of people will talk loudly on them too.
I suppose we should be grateful that goblin mode has at least introduced a new, altogether more achievable aesthetic to the travel conversation. Filtered Instagram shots of arty cocktails and overly saturated sunsets in — yawn — yet another jaw-dropping location are finally out; haphazard of-the-moment scenes of half-drunk cups of coffee and pretzels are in, partly courtesy of the BeReal app, which is booming in popularity with Gen Z. Besides, it’s all about the journey isn’t it? Now, pass me another mini Häagen-Dazs and tiny Diet Coke can, please — I’ve got some serious loafing about to do.
Do you embrace inflight goblin mode or are you more likely to dress up? Comment below or email travel@sunday-times.co.uk
04 financialtimes
Being on trend without trying doesn’t happen to me very often, so I was chuffed to find myself recognised by the Oxford Dictionaries word (or rather phrase) of the year: “goblin mode”. Although I think that, for a bunch of lexicographers, they could have come up with a better definition.
According to the Oxford publishers, the term voted for by more than 300,000 people to reflect the “mood, or preoccupations of the past twelve months” refers to “a type of behaviour which is unapologetically self-indulgent, lazy, slovenly, or greedy, typically in a way that rejects social norms or expectations”.Forget these judgy terms such as lazy and greedy — I say goblin mode is a celebration of the feral unfiltered self, a healthy and restorative state of anti-perfection. It might seem petty to be debating the semantics of a phrase that barely exists outside social media, but interpretation is everything.Take “quiet quitting”, which some took to mean giving up on your job while still accepting that pay cheque, while others saw it as establishing healthy work/life boundaries. The only mention I can find of goblin mode in the FT was to describe the pound when it plunged in September. Plaudits to my colleague for getting it into a financial article, but I’m not convinced.So while I can relate worryingly well to Instagram images tagged #goblinmode of cats stuffing cat food into their furry faces in the manner of Henry VIII at a banquet after one too many tankards of mead, here’s how I think it manifests itself on a more . . . human basis.
It’s eating pasta out of the saucepan (or Bridget Jones eating ice cream under a duvet); wearing a woolly hat not for warmth but because you haven’t washed your hair; dumping clothes on the floor to save time putting them away and then taking them out again; giving up on bras; sleeping in your clothes; eating all the raisins out of the cereal because there’s no chocolate in the house; dropping apple cores on the floor of the car. Some peak goblin mode behaviour: my brother-in-law putting a pillow inside a buttoned shirt because he couldn’t be bothered to find a pillowcase.With their slick suits and pristine off-duty wear, I really doubt that Rishi Sunak or Emmanuel Macron do goblin mode. However, Boris Johnson’s version of it, especially when he went for a jog dressed as a human jumble sale, made Gollum look like a Hollywood actor dressed for the Oscars in comparison. Sadly, Bojo didn’t get the memo that it was best enjoyed as a private and temporary state. (LMAO!) It’s not about giving up on life or all social and moral systems — it’s mental hibernation. A little holiday from being your best self and living your best life. Boxing Day, all year round, minus that January self-improvement nonsense.It’s stepping away from seeing yourself through the imagined gaze of other people. The publisher says the term, which went “viral” on social media in February 2022, rose in popularity after Covid lockdown restrictions eased: “It captured the prevailing mood of individuals who rejected the idea of returning to ‘normal life’, or rebelled against the increasingly unattainable aesthetic standards and unsustainable lifestyles exhibited on social media.”I can’t say I ever fell for the vapid bullet-journalling, green-juice-sipping #thatgirl aesthetic on TikTok, or the equally exhausting #girlboss, to which some people see this mode as an antidote. But I do welcome the official recognition given to a modus vivendi that rejects a curated existence, and puts the id before the ego.It’s also a vibe that questions consumerism, especially when viewed in the context of fashion. For the office, you probably do need a wardrobe of professional, modern clothes. For the recent Fashion Awards at the Royal Albert Hall, complete with red carpet, I hauled myself out of the metaphorical hovel and wore a black velvet dress and lots of gold jewellery. But for hanging around the house I don’t need an influencer-style oatmeal cashmere tracksuit, slouchy socks and stoneware mug, just my ancient Uniqlo fleece trousers and practically prehistoric jumper with moth holes that look as if they have been mended by Dr Frankenstein. It comes with a handy psychological boost, too: there’s nothing like looking really terrible to make you feel you’re Grace Kelly when you actually emerge from goblin mode and put on something clean. I ran into a fellow goblin a while ago and she looked unusually fresh and radiant. I asked what she had done, maybe Botox? A luxurious A-list facial? The answer: “I washed my face.” Goblin mode deactivated.
05 npr
It's mindlessly binge-watching television without worrying about the time. It's eating snacks in bed without a care about leftover crumbs. And it's wearing the same pair of pajamas all week while working from home. Welcome to "goblin mode."
The slang term is defined as a "type of behavior which is unapologetically self-indulgent, lazy, slovenly, or greedy, typically in a way that rejects social norms or expectations."
This year, Oxford Languages, the creator of the Oxford English Dictionary, titled "goblin mode" as the 2022 Word of the Year, meaning it best reflected the ethos and mood of the past 12 months.
People are embracing their inner goblin
The term first appeared on Twitter in 2009 but didn't go viral until 2022, according to Oxford Languages.
"It captured the prevailing mood of individuals who rejected the idea of returning to 'normal life', or rebelled against the increasingly unattainable aesthetic standards and unsustainable lifestyles exhibited on social media," the group wrote in a press release.
The slang particularly struck a chord with people who felt disillusioned by the third year of the pandemic and the ongoing political upheavals around the world. In response, they are rejecting societal expectations and making their own rules of how to live. The trend is marked by a departure from respectability and aesthetic. Instead, it encourages people to lean into their uncurated, self-indulgent and sometimes mischievous ways.
"People are embracing their inner goblin," said Casper Grathwohl, the president of Oxford Languages.
The 2022 Word of the Year was like no other
The Word of the Year is typically based on analyzing language data on emerging words and their popularity.
But this year, Oxford Languages incorporated a public vote into the process and asked people to cast their ballot between the top three expressions of the year: "goblin mode," "metaverse" and "#IStandWith."
More than 300,000 people voted with an overwhelming majority — about 93% — favoring "goblin mode."
Second place went to "metaverse," which refers to a "virtual reality environment in which users interact with one another's avatars and their surroundings in an immersive way, sometimes posited as a potential extension of or replacement for the internet." The word partly gained traction after Facebook's corporate parent changed its name to Meta in 2021.
The third place winner, "#IStandWith," is identified as "a way for people to communicate their opinions and align their stances on specific events." The hashtag and its variants particularly became popular in March 2022 after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.