LONDON — The phrase “rage bait” has been named the 2025 Word of the Year by Oxford University Press (“OUP”). Defined as “online content deliberately designed to elicit anger or outrage by being frustrating, provocative, or offensive, typically posted to increase traffic to or engagement with a particular web page or social-media content”, the term was selected after the OUP lexicographers and the public observed a three-fold surge in usage over the past 12 months.
This year’s shortlist included two other contenders: “aura farming”, meaning the deliberate cultivation of a cool or mysterious public persona, and “biohack”, the attempt to optimise one’s body or mind through lifestyle, technology or routine. Ultimately, “rage bait” was chosen to capture the mood of 2025 — a year marked by heightened awareness that digital engagement is shaped by provocation rather than purely by information.
According to Oxford, the term had its earliest recorded online usage in 2002, when it referred to driver irritation on Usenet; over time it evolved into a broader internet-slang term to criticise content that intentionally manipulates outrage, often as part of a strategy to game social-media algorithms. The selection comes at a moment when the digital ecosystem is under intensified scrutiny — with debates over algorithmic amplification, attention economy and the psychological cost of constant engagement.
Casper Grathwohl, President of Oxford Languages, said in the announcement that the recognition of “rage bait” suggests “we’re increasingly aware of the manipulation tactics we can be drawn into online… Before, the internet was focused on grabbing our attention by sparking curiosity in exchange for clicks, but now we’ve seen a dramatic shift to it hijacking and influencing our emotions.”
The word choice also reflects an evolution: following last year’s winner, “brain rot”, which captured the sense of mental fatigue from endless scrolling, “rage bait” points to the next stage — not just passively consuming content, but being actively provoked by it.
Analysts say the choice is significant for multiple reasons. First, it highlights how internet culture has shifted from informational to emotional engagement. Second, it signals growing public and scholarly concern about how digital platforms prioritise outrage-driven content. Finally, the word serves as a linguistic mirror of a year dominated by debates around AI, misinformation, mental health and the ethics of engagement.
In practical terms, the recognition of “rage bait” invites reflection. Content creators, platforms and users alike may need to ask: are we interacting because something genuinely interests us — or because it is designed to provoke us? The Oxford Word of the Year tradition, which has been running since 2004, aims to surface terms that reveal broader cultural trends — and in 2025 “rage bait” does exactly that.
As digital communication continues to evolve, the language we use to describe it becomes ever more critical. “Rage bait” is not just a catchy phrase — it underlines how the quest for attention, engagement and virality is reshaping both the medium and the message.
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