Goblin Mode and the Democracy of Language

A fun deep dive into internet slang

This month it was announced by the Oxford dictionary that this year’s word of the year was “Goblin Mode.” This didn’t come as a shock; the word (or phrase, technically) has skyrocketed in usage over the past several months, going from one of many niche internet jokes to usage so widespread that people like Elon Musk were posting Goblin Mode memes. While most people probably had a little chuckle about this year’s Oxford winner before promptly moving on with their day, it left me wondering: How does a word become word of the year, and what does a winner signify about the culture that brought it to fruition? 

Goblin Mode was one of a few choices that Oxford offered, allowing for people to vote for whichever they thought suited our current cultural moment the best. In many ways, each loser carries as much cultural significance as the winning word does. Not only does there have to be the cultural weight that allows for candidates to advance this far into the process, but it also has to have been passed over in favor of something else. This year’s losers exemplify this well, with the two runner ups being demolished in the public voting round. The runner up words for 2022 were “#IStandWith” and “Metaverse,” which came in second and third. This was not a tight race. Over 90 percent of the vote went to Goblin Mode, which seems like more than a mere rejection of the other words—but also a wholesale rebuking of them. 

The cultural context in which each of these words sits can shed some light as to why. Metaverse was a distant third, which may not come as a surprise. While the word itself has gained a lot of traction—with Facebook going so far as to change their name to Meta—the Metaverse itself has not gained this same traction. It seems like everyone, from the common layperson to the wealthy Facebook investors, all hate the Metaverse, and Facebook’s pivot in name seemed more like an attempt to manufacture consent than anything else. There certainly wasn’t anyone (aside from Zuckerberg himself) clamoring for more Metaverse in their lives, so it should come as no surprise that the word came in third. 

The second-place term is also interesting when viewed through a cultural lens. #IStandWith got nearly twice as many votes as Metaverse did, but this still amounted to very few. #IStandWith represents the solidarity that people who are fighting for a better world fight for, regardless of whomever they stand with. This allows for a both sides-ness to the word that probably makes it hard to vote for. The people who hashtag stand with Brittany Greiner, might not be the same people who hashtag stand with Amber Heard, Dave Chappelle, or Donald Trump. All of these are names who trended often this year and represent controversies that cleave across various cultural, social, and economic divides. #IStandWith is going to take on vastly different meanings to a conservative Republican man, versus a Black woman who considers herself a feminist, versus what it means to an apolitical gamer who spends a lot of time on Reddit. This already makes it harder for the word to leave its mark, but the inclusion of a hashtag likely drives a deathknell. This conjures images of social media campaigns, of cancel culture, of the Twitter trending page, and things that generally might not leave a great taste in people’s mouths. 

Goblin Mode was able to blow its competition out of the water, giving the term the humble job of representing the year 2022 in the annals of time—but it is not alone. It also sits in the cultural context of the many previous words of the year we have seen. The 2021 winner was “Vax” and in 2020 it was “Unprecedented Year,” which both need absolutely no explanation at all. In 2019, the winner was “Climate Emergency.” This means that for three years in a row, the winning word (or words, since they love picking two-word phrases) had some adjacency to the political sphere. The choice of Climate Emergency reminds us of the primacy of things like the devastating Australian Wildfires and people like Greta Thunberg, who was 2019’s Person of the Year. The constant march of time’s arrow and the overwhelming existence of the pandemic forced things like these to the back of our minds while in 2020 we wrote emails detailing our “unprecedented times” and vax versus anti vax fanatics battled it out in the political and cultural spheres. 

Previous words of the year give us a space to reflect on where we as a society have been, without offering much about where we are going. Goblin Mode does not tell us anything about the fate of the world in 2023, but it does remind us of the fate we have faced the past few years, as people come back out of the house in varying degrees to regain “normalcy.” We cannot forget the time we spent inside, the habits that changed, the ways it affected us mentally and physically, and the choice of Goblin Mode is almost a celebration of the hardship that people have faced. Laying in bed, binging Netflix, and eating ice cream out the tub would have been called a lazy (or even depressive) action pre-pandemic, but after we were all forced to do that to some extent, now we merely call it Goblin Mode. Celebrating this behavior, in an abstract sense, can assuage some of the guilt or anxiety we feel about having to live in stasis during the pandemic and it can also help people who are still preferring to stay inside now. Sure, the world is dangerous, but at least we can go Goblin Mode and stay indoors.

The journey Goblin Mode took to become a part of our everyday lexicon is similar to the way much of our slang has come about. People who spend too much time on social media have been making jokes about going Goblin Mode for a while, but it got a huge spike after the viral twitter user JUNIPER made a post claiming that the reason Julia Fox and Kanye West broke up was because he didn’t like when she “went goblin mode.” Goblin Mode as a term became closely intertwined with Twitter, so much so that when Elon Musk decided to buy Twitter—and then promptly changed his mind—he tweeted a Goblin Mode meme as his explanation. The now-deleted tweet has been immortalized for us by JUNIPER here. While this is a funny moment to look back on, it also speaks to the ways language is disseminated throughout a cultural space and the ways people in power may co opt that in order to try to advance their own agendas (or in this case, to try to renege on a bad purchase). Goblin Mode has undergone a swift transformation, a phase shift into something ubiquitous. It had reached the wealthiest man in the world, showing how far it had spread from being a dumb internet joke. But Musk’s use of the phrase—specifically in relation to trying not to get sued into making a 44 billion dollar mistake—shows the ways the people in power may try to use the parlance of the common person in order to further their goals. There is nothing “Goblin Mode” about multibillion dollar corporate purchases, but eliciting a laugh can take some of the heat off Elon and make him seem like a normal guy for a moment. (Although the now-deleted tweet obviously did not accomplish its goal). 

One’s relationship to power, capital, and influence is going to have a strong effect on how you interpret the world around you. In this way, your interpretation of the word of the year is going to be viewed through this lens. #IStandWith is wrapped in layers of context that mean something different to everyone. Those in power are less likely to support a choice like that when the whole point of something like #IStandWith is solidarity, especially in the face of power. While the winner of the word of the year does not mean systemic change is coming (it has been three years since “Climate Emergency” won and we haven't done much for that one), it is a reminder that language is as democratic an institution as anything else in the world around us. The words that those in power do or do not want to acknowledge does not change the fact that we choose their collective use. In this way, a word can become a battleground. While Goblin Mode does not elicit a strong socio-political response, words like last year’s “Vax” do. Arguably the best example for the way words have become a cultural battleground is with the word “woke,” but that is a topic for another day (and it is, in fact, the topic of an upcoming essay).

Overall, I don’t think the term “Goblin Mode” is the most politically or culturally significant thing online right now. Far from it, in fact. But it does represent something larger. It represents the democratic way that we disseminate language and serves as a reminder that there is power in that. Nobody knows what the next viral word will be or what cultural moment it will be in response to, but it’ll be fun to see how it relates to the world around us and the discussions that came before. The choice is always ours. As for me, I am going to choose to go goblin mode by getting a couple oatmeal cookies and lying in bed. Thanks for reading!

P.S. “Slay” should have been the word of the year, but that’s a topic for another day.