Certified Unhinged: Why Calling Someone a Golden Retriever Is the Highest Compliment of 2025

There's a moment that happens at every dog park in America. A normally dignified border collie suddenly decides that the laws of physics are a suggestion, tucks its tail into a blur, and laps the fence line at Mach 2 for absolutely no reason. Everyone stops. Everyone smiles. The dog, having burned off roughly four seconds of pure joy, returns to sniffing a sprinkler head like nothing happened.

That moment has a name now — zoomies — and somewhere in the last few years, it stopped being a thing dogs did and became a thing people are.

From Vet Terminology to Group Chat Compliment

Zoomies, for the record, is not official science. The clinical term is FRAP — frenetic random activity periods — which sounds less like joy and more like a medical event your insurance will deny. But 'zoomies' won the culture war, and by 2020 it had escaped the dog park entirely. People described their cats getting zoomies. Then their toddlers. Then, crucially, themselves.

'Language moves toward whatever gives us the most accurate emotional shorthand,' says Dr. Ellen Marsh, a sociolinguist who studies internet vernacular (and who asked us to note she was eating a sandwich during the interview). 'Saying "I felt briefly euphoric and unselfconscious" takes nine words. Saying "I had the zoomies" takes four, and it comes with a whole visual attached.'

That visual is the engine. The zoomies are legible. You don't have to explain them, because everyone has seen them.

The Golden Retriever Personality Doctrine

If zoomies are the behavior, the golden retriever is the archetype. 'Golden retriever energy' — often modified by 'unhinged' — now describes a very specific kind of person: relentlessly enthusiastic, physically incapable of being cool, prone to greeting friends like they've been gone eleven years even though it's been a weekend.

The compliment works because it's the opposite of the internet's default mode. Online, everyone is performing world-weariness. Being called a golden retriever says: you have somehow resisted becoming jaded, and honestly, we're worried, but also, please continue.

It's worth noting the counterpart exists. Nobody wants to be told they have 'black cat energy' ironically. But nobody — and we mean nobody — has ever been upset about being compared to a dog that would genuinely die for a tennis ball.

Why Dogs? Why Now?

Meme historian Marcus Oyelaran (self-appointed, but with a spreadsheet) thinks the timing is no accident. 'The last five years have been a masterclass in collective stress. People got exhausted with metaphors built on grind culture — being a machine, being a beast, crushing it. Dog metaphors are the antidote. A dog isn't optimizing. A dog is just here, thrilled, at maximum volume.'

There's also a structural thing happening: dog content is one of the last universally agreed-upon good things on the internet. Nobody is fighting about a golden retriever falling down the stairs. The dog-metaphor boom is the culture reaching for the last shared reference point we all agree on.

The Best Zoomies Posts of the Year (A Highly Scientific Gallery)

We compiled the year's finest examples, judged on velocity, commitment, and complete lack of purpose:

• The Wedding Aisle FRAP. Ring bearer, golden retriever, mid-ceremony. He did a full perimeter lap of the venue during the vows. The couple has confirmed they are keeping him in the divorce.
• Office Zoomies, Human Edition. A TikTok of a man doing a single triumphant lap around his cubicle after sending an email he'd been avoiding for three weeks. 4.2 million views. Comment section: 'this is just the zoomies with a W-2.'
• The Grandpa Incident. A 74-year-old in Ohio who, upon his granddaughter's acceptance letter arriving, sprinted the length of his driveway and back, twice, for no logistical reason. Local news covered it. He was unavailable for comment because he was napping in a sunbeam.
• The NFL Touchdown Celebration. A player who scored, then immediately ran to the sideline and did laps around the bench. The broadcast booth called it 'textbook zoomies.' The broadcast booth was right.

The Compliment Economy's New Currency

Here's the thing about calling someone a golden retriever: it's a compliment that costs nothing and asks nothing. It doesn't require the person to be talented, successful, or attractive. It just requires them to be glad to be there, loudly, in a way that makes other people glad too.

In an economy where every interaction is rated and optimized, that might be the most radical compliment left. So the next time a friend texts you something unhinged at 7 a.m. with seventeen exclamation points, don't roll your eyes.

Tell them they've got the zoomies. Then go do a lap yourself.

The dog at the park would want you to.