What Oxford Dictionary’s Word of the Year, ‘rage bait’, says about today’s internet

What does rage baiting look like in practice, why did Oxford choose this word, and what does it say about the internet in 2025? We explain.

What is rage bait?

Rage baiting can happen in many forms, ranging from an online post about a controversial topic written in a polarising manner, or a video that exaggerates information and deliberately lacks nuance.

As Oxford noted, it has similarities to another popular online tactic: “clickbait”. While the word has long been used for misleading, false or exaggerated content, published by websites to entice users to click on their links, rage bait content does so solely through negative provocations.

This evolution speaks to how the internet has changed in only a few years. Oxford said, “As social media algorithms began to reward more provocative content, this has developed into practices such as rage-farming, which is a more consistently applied attempt to manipulate reactions and to build anger and engagement over time”.

A prominent example is the social media website X (formerly Twitter), which launched a monetisation programme only a few years ago. It allowed users to buy blue tick verification badges, which would then boost their profile to audiences on the platform. In turn, the number of views that their posts accrue (among other things) has been linked to the amount that the platform pays its users.

Thus, a clear incentive has been created for posts that grab eyeballs, even if the end result is making the internet a more hostile place.

Rage baiting on an engagement-hungry internet

Today, rage bait can cover everything from fabricated stories and anecdotes about someone’s daily life to issues linked to politics and wider conspiracy theories.

The simple solution for users may be to simply switch off, but for generations of young people growing up online, the temptation to engage is difficult to resist. Platforms are also now rewarding such content to drive up traffic, ensure more users stay on their websites for longer durations (called engagement), and raise advertising revenue.

Another World of the Year for 2025 encapsulates how difficult it is to stay away from the internet, even with the emergence of rage bait, AI-generated low-quality information (called “slop”) and other unsavoury elements. Cambridge Dictionary crowned “parasocial” as its choice, referring to the connections people feel with entities who don’t know them, including celebrities, actors, and even AI chatbots.

Often, even in the case of connections with other humans, the online medium proves crucial in users constantly checking for updates to ensure they don’t miss out on content, making it difficult to log off entirely.

Behind the choice of ‘rage bait’

To arrive at the word of the year, Oxford looks at several criteria. The first is a vote from the general public on the Oxford website, with over 30,000 votes logged over three days this year.

Then comes the expert analysis. Oxford lexicographers — people who professionally study words that enter dictionaries — comb through data and trends. They identify new and emerging words and expressions, “and examine the shifts in how more established language is being used.” They also observe the most influential moments of the year to create a shortlist of culturally relevant words.

This year’s final list included three words: rage bait, bio hack and aura farming. Bio hack, or biology hacking, simply refers to the ways to improve one’s health, while aura farming is an attempt to be seen as charming or cool.