‘Rage bait’ is the 2025 Oxford Word of the Year : NPR

Take a deep breath and think about your happy place: “Rage Bat” is the 2025 Oxford Word of the Year.

After three days of online voting by more than 30,000 participants, Oxford University Press announced on Monday that “Rage Bat” is the official selection, beating out fellow shortlist nominees “Aura Farming” and “Biohack.”

Defined as “online content deliberately designed to cause anger or outrage by being frustrating, provocative or offensive”, rage bait is “usually posted to increase traffic or engagement to a particular web page or social media account”, according to the Oxford definition.

When Internet content generates a passionate and negative emotional response from viewers, whether intentionally or not, it likely falls into the category of anger.

importance of oxford

Before the term “rage bat” entered the English lexicon around 2002, “the Internet was focused on capturing our attention by arousing curiosity in exchange for clicks,” says Caspar Grathwohl, chair of the Oxford Languages ​​Division at Oxford University Press. “Now we’ve seen a dramatic change in how it’s hijacking and influencing our emotions and how we respond.”

In recent months, the term gained popularity after actress Jennifer Lawrence revealed that she has a secret TikTok account that she uses to “have fights” with strangers online.

Oxford has called anger bait “the Internet’s most effective hook”, used to provoke that sensitive feeling of human anger that exists within all of us – though perhaps in different forms.

This year, says Oxford, “has been a year defined by humanity’s transformation into a technology-driven world.”

They list deepfake celebrities, AI-generated influencers, and virtual companions as examples of technology’s penetration into our minds and especially our emotions.

Is it possible to be “tempted to anger” by ChatGPT or by the chatbot itself? Perhaps now more than ever.

But it’s not just machine-learning technologies that can make their users “angry”, or vice versa. According to language experts at Oxford, the term’s usage increased in 2025 due to general social unrest and concerns over “digital well-being”.

“This significant increase reflects a trend in media generally that rewards anger with engagement,” Why is it on our shortlist?, Oxford shorthand for “anger bait”.

Personalizing the 2025 shortlist

For the past few years, Oxford Press has used social media to gather public opinion on its Word of the Year shortlist. This year, they deliberately used their Instagram page to run a digital campaign for its three shortlisted words.

“Rage Bat” was depicted as an unidentified man who appears to be wearing an alien-esque lizard mask. “I’m glad you’re crazy!” The blurb on his campaign poster reads, intentionally misspelled.

“Biohack” featured a robotic, green juice-drinking woman who asks the audience, “Have you ever tried to edit your lifespan?” Starring London-based actor and model Brenda Finn, “Biohack” subtly hints at the growing international popularity of plastic surgery and anti-aging diets.

And “aura cultivation” – “the cultivation of a commanding, attractive, or charismatic personality or public image” – appeared as a stylish influencer watching disapprovingly from a distance. If elected, Aura Farming’s “to-do list” includes banning fluorescent lighting, establishing universal basic income for micro-influencers, and teaching people to ride bikes without hands: because “no one should have to choose between reciting 19th-century poetry and keeping their balance on two wheels.”

Is it any surprise that last year’s Word of the Year was “brainroot”?