Oxford English Dictionary Names 'Rage Bait' Word of the Year for 2025

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) officially announced that the phrase 'rage bait' has been selected as the Word of the Year for 2025, following a three-day public vote involving more than 30,000 participants. This selection underscores the evolving landscape of digital interaction and content ethics online.

Experts at Oxford University Press define 'rage bait' as 'online content intentionally designed to provoke anger or outrage in a manner that is frustrating, provocative, or offensive, typically published to increase traffic or engagement on a specific webpage or social media account'. Linguistic data confirms that the usage of the term 'rage bait' tripled in the twelve months leading up to December 2025, signaling a significant cultural shift in how online attention is sought and allocated.

Casper Grathwohl, President of Oxford Languages, noted that recognizing 'rage bait' indicates a growing public awareness of manipulative tactics in the digital sphere. This contrasts with the 2024 selection, 'brain rot,' which focused more on mental fatigue from low-quality content consumption. Grathwohl observed that 'brain rot' and 'rage bait' together illustrate a strong cycle where outrage drives engagement, algorithms amplify it, and constant exposure results in collective mental exhaustion.

Etymologically, 'rage bait' combines the English words 'rage' and 'bait.' The first documented use of the term dates back to a 2002 Usenet post, where it described a driver's reaction to intentional agitation from another vehicle flashing its lights. The associated practice is sometimes termed 'rage-farming,' a more systematic effort to sustain engagement through provocative material, often employing misinformation or conspiracy theories. This practice, noted since at least January 2022, is a subset of 'rage-baiting' that manipulates the victim's anger to drive online interaction.

The competition for the distinction was notable, with other contenders reflecting contemporary issues. Finalists for 2025 included 'aura farming,' defined as the cultivation of a charismatic online persona, and 'biohack,' referring to performance optimization through technology or lifestyle changes. For comparison, the Cambridge Dictionary chose the adjective 'parasocial' as its 2025 Word of the Year, describing the one-sided emotional connection formed with public figures, a concept traceable to a 1956 academic article by Donald Horton and Richard Wohl.

The prominence of 'rage bait' demonstrates the English language's continued adaptation to describe new nuances in digital culture, where attention monetization often relies on emotional polarization. The threefold increase in the term's usage within a year suggests that society is increasingly cognizant of how platform algorithms actively promote content engineered to elicit strong emotional responses for financial gain. This shift from curiosity-driven 'clickbait' to content explicitly targeting negative emotions underscores a key development in the increasingly polarized online ecosystem, a recognition cemented by the Oxford English Dictionary in 2025.