Oxford picks ‘rage bait’ as word of the year

Online outrage has become so familiar that it now has its own linguistic milestone.

Oxford has named “rage bait” as its Word of the Year for 2025, pointing to a surge in use and the way it has come to frame debates about how we behave on the internet.

The term refers to content that is crafted to provoke anger, frustration or offence in order to draw attention and drive engagement.

According to Oxford, its use has tripled over the past 12 months as conversations about algorithms, emotional manipulation and the toll of online life have entered the mainstream.

More than 30,000 people took part in a three-day poll before the word was selected.

This year’s news cycle, dominated by quarrels over content moderation, concerns about digital wellbeing and disputes over political messaging online, helped bring the phrase into sharper focus.

“Rage bait,” Oxford’s analysts note, is distinct from clickbait: it is not about teasing or tempting the reader, but about triggering reactions designed to keep users scrolling, sharing and arguing.

Casper Grathwohl, president of Oxford Languages, said the rise of the term signals a shift in the way people think about the attention economy and how emotional triggers are used to hold it captive.

“Before, the internet was focused on grabbing our attention by sparking curiosity in exchange for clicks,” he said. “Now we have seen a dramatic shift to it hijacking and influencing our emotions and how we respond.”

Oxford pointed to the cycle that many users now recognize: outrage fuels engagement, engagement trains algorithms, and the resulting amplification feeds more anger.

In that sense, “rage bait” joins last year’s choice, “brain rot,” as a reflection of the darker side of digital culture. If “brain rot” captured the sense of exhaustion from endless low-value content, “rage bait” highlights the deliberate engineering of division and discord.

The shortlist also included “aura farming,” a term about curating an image of confidence or mystique online, and “biohack,” relating to attempts to optimize body or mind. Both have grown in use, but Oxford’s data showed that “rage bait” was the clearest expression of how online behavior, language and ethics have evolved through 2025.