The 2022 Oxford Dictionary word of the year has met its moment.
The word of the year could have been “slacker,” “layabout,” “enervated,” “slothful,” “indolent,” or “lazy-ass.” But those words have come and gone and served their purpose in the past. No, this year the big brains in the dictionary world searched high and low — mostly low — to determine the word of the year.
The dictionary people didn’t have to search far. And we suppose that’s the point.
After combing slacker accounts on the inter-webs and social media websites for a few minutes, the Oxford lexicon experts have determined that the word that most embodies the 2022 zeitgeist hails from this greatest generation of Millennials.
These people are “unapologetically self-indulgent,” slovenly, Zoom in their jammies, possess job titles like “Instagram influencer,” are greedy, code on the toilet, eat ice cream for breakfast, and stream bootlegged shows.
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In other words, they go “goblin mode.”
The official dictionary people define goblin mode as “a type of behavior which is unapologetically self-indulgent, lazy, slovenly, or greedy, typically in a way that rejects social norms or expectations.”
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The Guardian reported earlier this year that “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’.” It was an equal and opposite reaction to everyone sprucing up their digs during COVID.
The archetype of goblin mode behavior is on every news website around the world.
Sam Bankman-Fried, a chubby, slovenly, shady, greedy, and lazy dude if ever there was one best exemplifies Oxford’s word of the year. Bankman-Fried is the embodiment of goblin mode. The “man” has met his moment.
Now, you might be thinking, Well, he really hustled and got all those Democrats to take his money, he went to all the right meetings, knows all the movers and shakers, spoke at Davos, and reputedly carried out a scheme to make it look like he was helping the Ukrainians with cryptocurrency while recycling it into Democrat politics. Methodically stealing other peoples’ money takes some hustle and discipline, it’s true. Running what is reputed to be a Ponzi scheme takes sociopathological chutzpah. And it’s even easier when you’re high on amphetamines.
That’s not nothing.
As The New York Post reported, a source who’d been in the Bahamas with SBF and company saw them “staying up all night, snorting Adderall, smelling like they hadn’t showered in a week.”
The Post noted that Caroline Ellison, SBF’s erstwhile girlfriend and CEO of his other company, Alameda Research, “scoffed at those who didn’t take drugs in a 2021 tweet: ‘Nothing like regular amphetamine use to make you appreciate how dumb a lot of normal, non-medicated experience is.’”
nothing like regular amphetamine use to make you appreciate how dumb a lot of normal, non-medicated human experience is
— Caroline (@carolinecapital) April 5, 2021
But when he wasn’t schlepping to meetings with his filthy messenger bag in tow, the chief goblin wore dirty t-shirts and drove a corolla to his $40 million penthouse in the Bahamas — where accounting practices were gauzy and everybody shared everybody in a goblin-mode version of Sister Wives — and gave away other peoples’ money, pretending he was a humble, noble, billionaire.
Bankman-Fried went to all the right schools. He pitched all the right Silicon Valley VCs. His parents are Stanford professors. His dad is a tax law expert. But somewhere along the line he never got the essential life lessons, such as don’t steal, don’t covet, don’t lie, and don’t pretend you’re more pious than the next guy.
Sam Bankman-Fried could have profited greatly if MIT had a Dean of Students like the one at Faber College. As Dean Wormer told Flounder, “Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son.”
Would that more permanent-goblin-mode adults took that advice to heart.
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