‘Rage Bait’ Chosen as Oxford’s Word of 2025

Oxford University Press has selected “rage bait” as its 2025 Word of the Year, highlighting a term whose usage has tripled over the past year and reflects growing public awareness of emotionally manipulative online content.

Oxford defines “rage bait” as digital material intentionally crafted to provoke anger or outrage through frustration, provocation or offensiveness, typically to drive traffic or boost engagement on websites and social media platforms.

Casper Grathwohl, president of Oxford Languages, noted that the rise of the term illustrates shifting online dynamics, where emotional manipulation increasingly replaces curiosity-driven clicks. He described the trend as part of a wider debate about human behavior in a technology-driven world and “the extremes of online culture.”

Grathwohl contrasted this year’s choice with last year’s Word of the Year, “brain rot,” which captured the mental fatigue associated with endless scrolling.

Together, he said, the two terms reveal a feedback loop in which outrage fosters engagement, algorithms amplify it and constant exposure leaves users mentally depleted.

While formally recognized in 2025, Oxford University Press traced the expression back to 2002, when it appeared on Usenet describing a driver’s intentionally aggravating response to another motorist. 

Over time, the phrase evolved into internet slang used to describe viral posts, and to critique the broader digital ecosystems that shape what users see and share.