Good news for those who find their blood pressure rising while scrolling through their online news feed: The publisher of the Oxford English Dictionary has highlighted the word they may need to describe how they often feel, and named “rage bat” as the word of the year.
According to analysis by Oxford University Press, use of the phrase has tripled in the past 12 months.
It defines it as “online content that is intentionally designed to cause anger or outrage by being disappointing, provocative or offensive, usually posted to increase traffic or engagement to a particular webpage or social media content”.
Caspar Grathwohl, president of Oxford Languages, said its existence shows how aware people are becoming of “manipulative tactics” used to grab their attention online.
“In the past, the Internet was focused on capturing our attention by generating curiosity rather than clicks, but now we have seen a dramatic shift in how it is influencing our emotions and how we respond.
“It feels like a natural progression in the ongoing conversation about what it means to be human in a technology-driven world – and the extremes of online culture.”
He added that, where last year’s choice – “Brain Rot” – “captures the mental drain of endless scrolling, ‘Rage Bait’ highlights content that is deliberately designed to provoke outrage and increase clicks”.
“Together, they create a powerful cycle where outrage drives engagement, algorithms amplify it, and constant interaction drains us mentally,” said Grathwhole. “These words don’t just define trends; they illustrate how digital platforms are reshaping our thinking and behavior.”
While the term is being recognized in 2025, Oxford University Press states that “anger bait” has been in existence since just after the turn of the century. It was “first used online in 2002 in a posting on Usenet as a way to designate a particular type of driver response when requested by another driver to pass them, which introduced the idea of deliberate movement”.
It states that the term has evolved into Internet slang that is used “to describe viral tweets, often to criticize the entire network of content that determines what is posted online, such as platforms, creators, and trends”.
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