Performance & Identity
In editing a short Kakao message — deleting a line that felt “try-hard,” adding a polite emoji, and imagining specific classmates reading it — Goffman would say you are engaged in this everyday process of shaping what others think of you.
Impression Management
An infant seeing its reflection, or a teenager obsessively editing a selfie until it shows a perfect, unified “me,” illustrates Lacan’s idea that we identify with an image that feels more coherent than we do inside. He calls this developmental moment this.
The Mirror Stage
A culture that constantly says “Be your best,” “Optimize yourself,” and “You can be whoever you want to be,” while producing burnout and anxiety, is what Han calls this.
Achievement Society
A theme park street, influencer persona, or curated digital life that feels “more real than real” illustrates Baudrillard’s term for this condition.
The hyperreal
Berger’s basic claim that what we see is never neutral, but shaped by culture, history, class, and ideology, is summed up in this text.
Ways of Seeing
A student constantly frames the past through warm family memories, old photos, and gratitude for what shaped them. In Zimbardo’s framework, this is this time perspective.
Past Positive
The version of yourself you perform in the interview room, on a class presentation, or during Kevin’s first tutoring session in Parasite belongs to this carefully managed region of social life.
Frontstage
A student wants to say exactly what they feel, but an internal voice of guilt, shame, and rules says, “Don’t.” Freud would locate that pressure here.
The superego
BONUS!
This is the largest coffee drink size available at Starbucks.
Trenta
A copy, model, or image that no longer points back to any stable original is called this by Baudrillard.
A simulacrum
When the meaning of an artwork changes because it is cropped, captioned, reproduced in a textbook, or reframed by context, the key process in Berger is this.
Reproduction
A classmate says, “I know I have a test tomorrow, but tonight is for fun, food, and vibes.” This orientation toward time is called this.
Present hedonistic
BONUS!
Approximately 70% of Korea's oil imports must pass through this waterway.
The Strait of Hormuz
When a desire, fear, or conflict is pushed out of conscious awareness instead of being resolved, Freud calls that process this.
Repression
This unique term was introduced in 2004 to describe a phenomenon observed on social networking sites whereby users described anxiety over the notion that others may be experiencing something that they are not.
Fear of Missing Out (FOMO)
Durkheim’s 1912 concept for the surge of shared emotional energy that creates solidarity in gatherings and rituals is this.
Collective effervescence
When women are positioned as being looked at and monitoring themselves as visible objects, while men are framed as acting subjects, Berger calls this structure the ____.
Male gaze
These are retrospective assessments of how quickly or slowly personally significant periods are remembered to have passed.
Life-tempo judgements (LTJs)
BONUS!
This is the fastest growing sport by new players, internationally, in 2026.
Pickleball
When frustration, aggression, or desire gets redirected into painting, debate, religion, or obsessive studying, Freud calls that redirection this.
Sublimation
Treating people mainly as labels, patterns, scripts, or categories — and replying with canned reactions instead of reflective empathy — fits this "hypothesis."
Cognitive NPC hypothesis
When people in a group lose personal identity and self-awareness, often behaving in ways they normally would not, this is called this.
Deindividuation
BONUS!
"Let's go to the bookshop with Mr. C, my friend and my dad." INCORRECT
"Let's go to the bookshop with Mr. C, my friend, and my dad." CORRECT
This is the name of the piece of punctuation missing from the incorrect sentence.
Oxford comma
BONUS!
N Seoul Tower - or Namsan Tower - is owned by this company.
YTN
When one awkward slip, wrong tone, inconsistent story, or badly timed gesture threatens to expose the whole act and collapse the audience’s belief, Goffman would call that risk this.
Spoiled Identity
When recommendation systems seem to anticipate and steer desire before users fully reflect on it, the Possati reading names this psychoanalytic-tech condition with this phrase.
Algorithmic unconcious
The healthier, more open form of tiredness that does not isolate you in competition but instead makes contemplation and receptivity possible is this, according to Han.
Fundamental tiredness
When a person is broken into scores, clicks, flags, and data fragments rather than treated as a whole individual, Deleuze would call them this.
Dividual
BONUS!
Fairy floss is what Australians call this delectable gossamer treat.
Cotton candy
Museums collect objects from different times and cultures, juxtaposing them in a single space where time appears to stop and accumulate - Foucault would refer to them as an example of this.
A heterochrony