If you have spent any time on social media recently, you might have encountered the term "Goblincore." It is an aesthetic and a mindset that rejects the polished, minimalist perfection of modern life in favour of the chaotic, the cozy, the earthy, and the comfortably "ugly." It is about burrowing into a pile of blankets, collecting shiny trinkets, and valuing comfort over appearance.
Why are we discussing a niche internet subculture in a marketing analysis? Because this December, the Goblincore mindset has silently taken over the eCommerce landscape. After years of chasing the "Cyberpunk" dream of high-speed, neon-lit digital perfection, both consumers and marketers are exhausted. The burnout following Black Friday has left us craving authenticity and ease rather than performative excellence.
The data from the whole year 2025 confirms this shift. We are no longer striving for the perfect search or the perfect platform. We just want things to work, to be cared for, and to grow at a natural pace. Here are the three trends that define this new, moss-covered reality of digital marketing.
The Warm Burrow: The Comfort of Agentic AI
There is nothing more "Goblincore" than the desire to stay in your comfortable burrow while someone else does the hard work in the mud. This is exactly why the "Agentic Economy" has exploded this month. We are witnessing a departure from the active, tiring process of searching for products. Instead, we are seeing the rise of a passive, pampered experience.
Data released this week reveals a staggering 760% year-on-year increase in traffic driven by autonomous AI agents. This is not about technology for technology's sake; it is about relief. The exhausted consumer is delegating the chaos of choice to a digital assistant, asking it to fetch the "shiny objects" while they rest. For the marketer, this means the era of shouting for attention is over. We must now focus on the quiet, nurturing task of feeding data to these agents, ensuring our customers feel safely cocooned in a personalised experience that requires zero effort on their part.
Read the full analysis on AI traffic shifts here
The Broken Pot: Why Big Isn't Always Beautiful
Goblincore celebrates the beauty in broken things and rejects the facade of perfection. This philosophy was forcibly applied to the enterprise sector on December 1st, when the Shopify platform suffered a massive global outage during the Cyber Monday peak. It was a moment that exposed the ugly wiring behind the glossy storefronts.
For years, the industry has been obsessed with "bigger is better." But when the giant stumbles, the fall is devastating. This incident has brought a sense of humility back to the boardroom. Marketers are realising that a massive, monolithic system is fragile. There is a newfound appreciation for the "ugly" but functional reality of diversified infrastructure. Much like moss growing resiliently over a rock, a multi-cloud or headless architecture might seem more complex and less "clean" initially, but it survives the storm. The trend for 2026 is not about looking perfect; it is about being unbreakable, even if the backend looks a bit chaotic.
See the technical breakdown of the outage here
The Slow Forest: GEO As Sustainable Growth
Finally, we observe a profound shift in how we cultivate attention and authority. The frantic race for immediate clicks through traditional Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is giving way to a more mature, deliberate approach: Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO). This new paradigm resembles a slow-growing forest, where value is built organically over time, not extracted in quick, destructive bursts.
In the spirit of Goblincore, which values the patient hoarding of genuine knowledge and "shiny truths," marketers are moving away from the impulsive "burn and churn" content tactics of the past. Instead of flooding the web with low-value posts to game an algorithm, they are "trading down" in volume to trade smarter in quality. GEO is about managing your intellectual resources sustainably—building deep, structured, and authoritative content that serves as a reliable data source for AI models.
For the digital marketer, this is a signal to slow down and plant deep roots. We are adopting a strategy of sustainable growth, focusing on foundational elements like unified data and genuine expertise. This approach nurtures long-term relationships with both human customers and the AI agents that serve them, developing trust naturally, season after season, rather than demanding the immediate, fleeting gratification of a top-ranking keyword.
Read more about adapting to the new normal of AI in eCommerce
Embrace The Mud
The lesson of December 2025 is that we do not need to be perfect to be profitable. In fact, trying to be perfect is breaking us. The future belongs to those who can offer the comfort of AI automation, the resilience of a diversified "ugly" backend, and the sustainable pace of flexible finance.
It is time to stop polishing the surface and start caring for the ecosystem underneath.
Ready to let AI handle the heavy lifting for your retention strategy?
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