• Oxford University Press has named ‘rage bait’ its Word of the Year for 2025.
• The term refers to content designed to provoke anger and social media engagement.
• More than 30,000 people participated in online voting for the award.

Oxford University Press (OUP) has announced that “rage bait” is its Word of the Year for 2025, a term reflecting the pervasive strategies of online content designed to provoke anger and stimulate engagement on social media. The term encapsulates the essence of digital discourse, capturing a moment when online attention is often garnered through inflammatory content, disrupting healthy conversation. Its selection follows a significant surge in its usage, approximately tripling in the past year, indicative of growing public engagement with the implications of digital media, according to India Times and South China Morning Post.

Defined as online content "deliberately designed to elicit anger or outrage" through frustrating or provocative means, “rage bait” aims to increase interactions such as shares and comments on social media platforms. It has emerged from concerning trends in digital engagement that often reward provocative over informative content, a shift noted by lexicographer Susie Dent in discussing how social media algorithms function, as highlighted by sources like The Hill and ABC News.

"Rage bait" was chosen following online voting that involved over 30,000 participants, with two other noteworthy terms in contention: "aura farming," which focuses on creating a curated public image, and "biohack," defined as efforts to enhance physical or mental performance. The final choice reflects significant cultural moments in the digital landscape, as supported by analysis from Oxford’s language experts tracking a large corpus of language usage, as reported by Le Monde and NPR.