Vibe Coding’ vs. ‘Broligarchy’: A 2025 Linguistic Battle of Tech Creation vs. Tech Power

The 2025 Collins Dictionary Word of the Year list presents a fascinating linguistic battle over the soul of technology. The winner, “vibe coding,” represents the democratic, creative promise of AI. Meanwhile, another entry, “broligarchy,” captures the public’s deep suspicion of the power wielded by those who control it.
“Vibe coding” is the celebratory term. It’s the AI-assisted process of turning natural language into code, hailed as a tool for accessibility and “seamless” human-machine creativity. It’s the utopian vision of technology, as described by its coiner Andrej Karpathy.
In sharp contrast, “broligarchy” is a word of critique. A portmanteau of “bro” and “oligarchy,” this pejorative term is used to describe the small circle of tech leaders who own the largest global tech companies. Its rise in usage, especially after their political appearances, shows a growing public anxiety about this concentration of power.
This linguistic tension is palpable. We are simultaneously excited by the products of tech (“vibe coding”) and deeply suspicious of the people who run tech (“broligarchy”). We are inventing language to celebrate the tools while also inventing language to critique the new class of rulers these tools have created.
The 24-billion-word Collins Corpus tracked the rise of both terms, proving that in 2025, our conversation about technology is a two-sided coin: one side is marked by creative optimism, the other by a fear of a new, unaccountable power.