Between laziness and nihilism: what is it like to go into 'goblin mode', the word of the year for the Oxford dictionary

More than winning, it swept.

The Oxford Dictionary, in an admirable branding operation for an encyclopedia, put a vote on what should be the word of the year 2022. Actually, its definition of a word has gotten pretty lax in recent years.

They gave three options: "metaverse", the

"IStandWith" ("I go with" or "I support", intended to be completed with names of public figures) and

, that is, "

”.

93% of the 340,000 people who participated in the survey opted for the third, thus making this expression, which was first seen on prehistoric Twitter in 2009, the word of the year in English, but reached its peak of popularity in the Google trends in February of this year, after a user of Elon Musk's network posted a tweet with a false headline with statements by actress Julia Fox that never existed.

“Kanye West doesn't like it when I go

", they were saying.

For whatever reason, at a time when the pandemic was about to celebrate its second anniversary with a vaccine but without a solution – January 2022 had a high incidence of the virus – and in which the invasion of Ukraine by Russia was confirmed , caught the use of this concept that moves between carelessness and nihilism.

The same dictionary that has exalted it defines the "

way " as "a type of behavior that is blatantly self-indulgent, lazy, lazy or selfish in a way that rejects social norms and expectations."

The president of the consortium that publishes the dictionary, Casper Grathwohl, admitted in a press release that they had been very surprised this year by the level of vote turnout and enthusiasm for the

theme .

“Given the year we've experienced,

mode agrees with all of us who feel overwhelmed.

It is a relief to know that we are not always our curated, idealized selves that we present on our Instagram and Tik Tok accounts.

This has been demonstrated by the significant rise of platforms like BeReal where users share their raw images, many times capturing self-indulgent moments of themselves in

mode .”

But what is a

goblin

?

A

, simply, is a creature from Central European folklore, resembling a mischievous pixie or an

Irish

or the

from

.

Without being evil, they have a malicious point, but above all selfish, and zero interest in doing good.

Rather the complete opposite.

The

of 2022, however, are not found in the forest or in the Highlands but on the sofa, eating chips, wearing loose rubber pajamas and the remote or mobile at hand to choose platform products that do not require intellectual effort.

It is no coincidence that "

” was news in February and was back in December.

Cold, flu and low energy get along especially well with goblin mode.

Two goblins (that is, two goblins) in the Harry Potter studios.Jeff Spicer (Getty Images for Warner Bros. St)

On TikTok, the hashtag #goblinmode has been used as a counterpoint to #thatgirl, which refers to a girl who segments her day, gets up early to exercise, drinks vitamin shakes, does her job, and still has time to grow a healthy and balanced social life before going to bed (also soon and after having applied a beauty routine of no less than 15 steps).

Aesthetically, the

– which is associated with sloppiness and dirt, coffee cups with grounds, greasy pizza boxes and garbage not separated for recycling – is also the opposite of the

that triumphed in 2020 and 2021.

The journalist and writer Cat Marnell, herself an agent of chaos – in her book

, or

she recounted the many ways in which she had self-sabotaged in her twenties and thirties – emerged as an expert in

with a series of tweets in which he claimed to embrace that lifestyle.

“

mode takes over your body.

When you act crazy you enter a mythological space where you want to jump on the back of a salamander and ask for trouble ”, she would say.

And less allegorically, she pointed out that in the digital realm everyone tries to be perfect and it is good and refreshing to "connect with the strange creature that lives inside of you."

It makes sense that

mode reigned in the same year as another expression that could have been an Oxford dictionary finalist,

.

Once it was verified that the great resignation or the great resignation was unrealistic or inaccessible, the articles of sociological trends told us that many workers had chosen to resign quietly or leave without leaving, that is, to stay in their jobs but without seeking excellence, following the law of minimum effort, as primary school teachers used to say to unmotivated students.

It is there when one runs into the aspirational and even fanciful aspect of the

Who can afford to be an idle and lustful creature at work, or even in life?

Only someone who has accumulated a series of privileges or has them by series.

The care also gets along very badly with the

.

Ask someone who takes care of children, the elderly or dependents when was the last time they spent a whole day on the sofa.

A young student tries unsuccessfully to focus in 1955. Orlando (Getty Images)

“For me, the

is an imposture with which we try to deceive ourselves in the face of the obvious, that the liberal mentality has penetrated us to the marrow”, points out the sociologist and analyst Iago Moreno.

“Rather than pretend that we don't care, I think we would do well to share our pain and powerlessness more and politicize what we want to change.

Especially those of us who write, research or dedicate ourselves to creative work have assumed the neoliberal mythologies of creative work and we self-impose rhythms, demands and work schedules that we would not tolerate a boss”.

mode

, that everything matters less to you, to make less effort to loosen the pressure of the system, in the end it is equivalent to demanding a change of attitude in the alienated person, Moreno believes.

That is, in asking for one more effort, even if it is in another way.

“I think we need more rights, agreements, certainties, more than a change in attitude.

That comes from the first and not the other way around.

Until then it is normal that we cannot be the

that we would like to become.

We come with the Santa Claus elf chip pre-installed.”

The philosopher Eudald Espluga, who reflected on the phenomenon of self-exploitation (the

) in his book

(Paidós), is also skeptical.

“Beyond the fact that it is chosen word of the year, I do not believe that this notoriety of the idea is accompanied by a cultural, social and material change through which personal self-realization can be given regardless of effort, commitment, work and constant improvement”.

The recent episode in

in which Patricia Conde went into

in the final and said that he was sleepy and that he did not feel like competing for the jacket as much as his teammates, it could be seen as a triumph of this idea.

In the networks, most of the public positioned itself with Conde and pointed out how tyrannical and even ridiculous the speech of Jordi Cruz and Samanta Vallejo-Nájera is at the end of 2022, which sounded fresher when we began to see

over there .

first

.

Two seals go into 'goblin mode' in Argentine Patagonia. DEA / P. JACCOD (De Agostini via Getty Images)

However, according to Espluga, this phenomenon has more to do with the need to stop, with the

of constant self-improvement that Jenny Odell talks about in her book

(Alpha Decay), than with a true paradigm shift.

“Praising this concept does not necessarily lead us to unproductive leisure, but rather the opposite.

What works in the case of Patricia Conde, I think, is not so much the claim of not doing, of resignation, but the authenticity of acknowledging one's own discomfort.

It's a bit of

.

In that sense, the circulation of

mode functions more as an aesthetic code than a political practice.

And he concludes: “The

is the necessary social choreography of BeReal users, a calculated or not calculated sloppiness that recycles weariness, fatigue and the rebellion of social imperatives as a personal brand image”.

In 2022 we admit that it's okay to say "I'm not there", we celebrate skipping the diet without carbohydrates and the application of retinol, we wanted to believe ourselves to be lazy and mischievous elves, but in reality we are still the hyper-productive and obedient creatures that the system needs to continue working.

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