Love Bombing to Breadcrumbing, 2022 Was the Year of Pop Psych Terms. Here's What They Mean

Terms like goblin mode, paperclipping, breadcrumbing and more were popularised by the Internet in 2022.

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Internet popularised many terms people didn't know very much about. (Photo: Reuters)

2022 has been the year that terms of psychology became truly mainstream. ‘Gaslighting’ became Merriam-Webster’s word of the year and Oxford’s word of the year was ‘goblin mode’. These were terms that many of us heard for the first time thanks to Twitter, Instagram Reels or TikTok. Mental health advice has turned into content fodder on these platforms with an immense capacity to misguide. For instance, as per an AFP report, PlushCare, a platform specialized in booking appointments for doctors and therapists, found that 83.7% of the advice about mental health on TikTok in their sample was misleading.

While more than half (54%) of the tips had accurate information, just under a third (31%) were full of inaccurate information. What’s worse, 14% of the content contained potentially damaging information, and only 9% of the creators of the videos analysed had a relevant qualification to help people in trouble.

Read the detailed AFP report here.

Despite this, you’ve got to admit: tweets and TikToks might might have introduced us to many concepts that we vaguely understood to be happening, but never had the terms for. A nuanced understanding of these terms is crucial, because social media platforms have made it so that natural human emotions and reactions are often problematised due to people’s skewed definitions of these words.

Here are some of the words popularised by the Internet this year.

1. Gaslighting

Merriam-Webster, in a statement on their website, defined the term as “psychological manipulation of a person usually over an extended period of time that causes the victim to question the validity of their own thoughts, perception of reality, or memories."

2. Goblin Mode

As per Oxford’s definition, goblin mode is ‘a type of behaviour which is unapologetically self-indulgent, lazy, slovenly, or greedy, typically in a way that rejects social norms or expectations.’ The word was selected by public vote after it went viral in February.

3. Trauma Dumping

Trauma dumping is the act of oversharing one’s strong and difficult emotions and trauma with others at inopportune moments, as per a psychologist quoted by Cleveland Clinic’s website. It adversely affects the person with whom said traumatic experiences have been shared. It is understood to be prolonged venting that is usually done without the listener’s permission.

4. Love Bombing

Love bombing is a manipulation technique involving bombarding a person with gestures of love in order to achieve a goal. “It’s often used to win over your trust and affection so that they can meet a goal of theirs," Shirin Peykar, a licensed marriage and family therapist, told Healthline.

5. Breadcrumbing

Breadcrumbing is the act of providing one with just enough packets of interest to keep their interest going, to encourage someone to believe that there is a possibility for a romantic relationship when it isn’t so.

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Apart from these, words such as ghosting, paperclipping, and other terms have been widely used this year. Many of the dating terms seem to have become more popular since the onset of the pandemic which, for a prolonged period, moved romantic relationships entirely onto online platforms.

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First Published:
December 16, 2022, 15:54 IST