Rage bait is the Oxford word of the year, but is it enough for the era we're in?

Rage bait is online content deliberately designed to elicit anger or outrage. Gerald Du / The National

As has become customary, the various word of the year announcements are upon us in what has become an effective piece of content marketing. They generate think pieces – like this one – and remind you that dictionaries are still around.

This year, the Oxford University Press's word of the year is "rage bait". I know what you’re thinking: that’s two words. Which begs the question, is selecting rage bait as the word of the year in itself a piece of rage bait?

For the blissfully unfamiliar, it refers to “online content deliberately designed to elicit anger or outrage by being frustrating, provocative, or offensive, typically posted in order to increase traffic or engagement".

Anyone who has spent a minute online in the past decade knows exactly what that means. Our entire online culture, which now essentially means our global cultural lingua franca, has devolved into a series of rage bait moments.

From headlines engineered to provoke, capitalising on platforms optimised to serve anger over delight, to a creator economy that rewards escalating extremity, it’s everywhere. It is so pervasive that the media release from the Oxford University Press came with a graph explaining that its use has tripled in the past 12 months. Given the expression has been around for a couple of decades, it is a noteworthy increase.

Rage bait drives engagement on social platforms. AP

The term first surfaced in 2002 on Usenet – the ancestor of all online discussion forums – and was used to describe “a particular type of driver reaction to being flashed at by another driver requesting to pass them, introducing the idea of deliberate agitation". That behaviour probably dates back to the first time two cars with headlights shared a road, but suddenly we had a name for it.

"The fact that the word rage bait exists and has seen such a dramatic surge in usage means we’re increasingly aware of the manipulation tactics we can be drawn into online," Casper Grathwohl, president of Oxford Languages, said in a statement.

Let’s not forget: rage baiting is big business. It drives engagement, and engagement drives revenue – for platforms and creators. So no one is particularly incentivised to counter it, civility notwithstanding.

Other contenders for this year's word (or more precisely, phrase) included aura farming – which a younger colleague had to explain to me, confirming my elder-millennial status – and biohack. That one I knew from occasionally clicking on podcasts about people’s morning “protocols”, which we used to just call “having breakfast”. The winner is selected by the dictionary's team of lexicographers, who analyse language trends, data and major shifts in use. "The team also ... look back at the world’s most influential moments of the year," its website said.

At this point, we have to mention AI, because it must feature in every conversation in 2025. “As technology and artificial intelligence become ever more embedded into our daily lives – from deepfake celebrities and AI-generated influencers to virtual companions and dating platforms – there’s no denying that 2025 has been a year defined by questions around who we truly are, both online and offline,” Grathwohl said.

Donald Trump posted an AI-generated vision of a future Gaza. Photo: Donald J. Trump / Truthsocial

The ability to manipulate imagery, thanks to tools including Sora, is pushing rage bait into new and potentially dangerous territory. I can’t help but think of US President Donald Trump’s AI-generated Gaza video from February as an example of rage bait at the highest level.

Is making rage bait the word of the year useful? Probably not. It doesn’t feel uniquely tied to this calendar year – despite the undeniable increase in use. Last year’s word brain rot (again, two words) felt more attuned to our particular moment.

A more interesting framing of rage bait is how the term has leapt from the online world back into real life. World leaders using rage bait is a total collapse of the social norms we once pretended to uphold.

That surely needs a different word – one that reflects the stakes away from edgy memes and motorists flashing their headlights at each other. Perhaps by the time the dictionaries need marketing material for 2026, we’ll have coined one.