If you’ve spent any time online this year, you’re likely familiar with rage bait, but if you need a refresher, it’s defined as “online content that is intentionally designed to cause anger or outrage by being disappointing, provocative, or offensive, typically posted to increase traffic to or engagement with a particular web page or social media content.”
“As technology and artificial intelligence become increasingly embedded in our daily lives – from deepfake celebrities and AI-generated influencers to virtual companions and dating platforms – there is no denying that 2025 is a year that will be defined by questions both online and offline,” Caspar Grathwohl, president of Oxford Languages, said in a press release.
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Rage bat won the official Oxford Word of the Year 2025 after being shortlisted by language experts along with “aura farming” and “biohack”. Then, over 30,000 people voted for the winner and experts ultimately chose Rage Bet after considering votes, comments from the general public, and analysis of textual data.
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“The fact that the term rage bait exists and has seen such a dramatic increase in use means that we are becoming increasingly aware of the manipulative tactics we may engage in online,” Grathwohl said. “In the past, the Internet was focused on capturing our attention by sparking curiosity rather than clicks, but now we’ve seen a dramatic shift in the way it’s influencing our emotions and how we respond. This feels like a natural progression into the ongoing conversation about what it means to be human in a technology-driven world – and the extremes of online culture.”
Now you might be thinking “But wait! Rage bait is two words. Is Oxford University Press Rage forcing us to choose ‘Rage bait’ for Word of the Year 2025?” But you would be wrong. The word of the year can be one word, two words, or an entire expression, as long as expert lexicographers believe it has only one unit of meaning.
And anger fodder certainly has that single unit of meaning.
Last year’s word of the year was brain rot. Here’s hoping something more promising happens in 2026.
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