BY AMANDA CHATEL | UPDATED: MARCH 2, 2023 12:07 AM EST
In case you missed it, the Oxford Word of the Year for 2022 was “goblin mode.” According to Oxford Languages, over 300,000 people voted on the word of the year and, yes, that’s the one that came out on top. Why? Because after the last few years of living in unprecedented times — enough with the unprecedented already! — goblin mode is the only way to live.
“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 Oxford Union Press event. “People are looking at social norms in new ways. It gives people the license to ditch social norms and embrace new ones.”
It’s also a dating strategy worth embracing. With goblin mode, you go into every first date 100% yourself and unapologetically so. If the world is going to implode (or explode) and take us all down with it, why not toss your hands up in the air, shrug, and just kick societal conventions to the curb? At this point, what do you have to lose? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. That’s why goblin mode is such a success: you’re being legit without a care in the world. You’ve jumped the line between social expectations and society’s prescribed ideas of what dating should be and settled into goblin mode right off the bat. In turn, you give your date the opportunity to go full-throttle goblin too. It’s refreshing, it’s invigorating, and it’s a fantastic time to be alive! >>> Read More:
