The word of the year is “rage bait”, as you’ve heard no doubt. “Brain rot” was last year’s, as you’ve certainly forgotten. “Rizz”, the one before that has hardly been heard of since, except in the ironic sense.
We should give thanks that “rage bait” narrowly edged out runners-up “aura farming” and “biohack” – because there’s surely a limit on what we need to know about such things. But the choice of “rage bait” as the Oxford University Press “word” of 2025 is particularly baffling.
Here we are indulging a `fun’ term most closely associated with a man who monetises hatred
The venerable OUP defines it as “online content deliberately designed to elicit anger,” which is “typically posted in order to increase traffic to or engagement with a particular web page or social media account.” Which basically sums up decades-worth of Twitter and Facebook and below-the-line comments in newspapers. When a column I wrote in the post-crash years attracted thousands of comments on The Irish Times website, one as numbingly offensive as the next, it was genuinely shocking (this was before we had properly adjusted to the free-range naked rage out there, and learned to manage our expectations accordingly). But it was obvious, even then, that almost anything could qualify as “rage bait”, depending on the reader’s perspective.
The verb “bait” itself means to deliberately annoy or to taunt someone – so while the OUP’s “word of the year” shtick is very effective clickbait (ie, to get attention and encourage clicks) while also generating some rage bait (ie, to provoke anger and encourage clicks), it’s all just baiting, in a very old-fashioned way. But online savagery needs no accolades.
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Despite all the effort to invest `rage bait’ with a deeper meaning, the term itself may actually be harmful
This is not a wussy plea for the preservation of “proper” offline English. Despite all the effort to invest “rage bait” with a deeper meaning – in short, a pathological drive for attention combined with the dysfunctionality of politics and the disappearance of empathy – the term itself may actually be harmful. It enables users to gather all the online hatred, racism and bullying and defang it into a fun, cool term. That’s rage bait, also once known as plain old “trolling” until that too lost all meaning when the routine response became “only trolling . . .”
This response might be a useful antidote if everyone could be persuaded to scroll past the hatred and provocation (or ditch the repulsive platforms) in that same fun, shruggy spirit. But they don’t, and they won’t. That’s largely down to the salient but rarely acknowledged fact that X’s hatred and dehumanisation can be monetised by users for views and money, something which Elon Musk’s platform actively incentivises through its payment structure. No cool makey-uppy word of the year can camouflage the social evil inherent in such a system or the fact that Musk is at the heart of it. That’s rage bait right there.
And people only engage in it online, of course. That’s because they are cowardly types and saying deliberately hateful things in real life could earn them a real-life slap. But some will do anything for money.
Think of the shrunken, grasping parade of tech bros lined up at Donald Trump’s inauguration, empty sacks for whom the dismantling of children’s minds and civil society is just a byproduct of business. That unholy get-together was shocking, because we knew the inevitable destination. What has happened since – in the near-vanishing of online moderation and heavier reliance on “community ratings” to regulate the hatred – has travelled millions of miles beyond “rage bait”. Three of the wealthiest tech giants, Musk, Bezos and Zuckerberg, also happen to control enormous chunks of the world’s media and the algorithms that drive them. In around 13 years, their cumulative wealth has increased from around $40 billion to almost $1 trillion.
We should give thanks that `rage bait’ narrowly edged out runners-up `aura farming’ and `biohack’ – because there’s surely a limit on what we need to know about such things
Despite all the effort to invest “rage bait” with a deeper meaning – in short, a pathological drive for attention combined with the dysfunctionality of politics and the disappearance of empathy – the term itself may actually be harmful
The consolation this week is observing Musk’s legally illiterate toddler-tantrum response to the EU’s €120 million fine imposed on X for transparency violations, or essentially shady business practices – or what the whingy perpetrator likes to call censorship.
To be clear, he tried to pass off his useless blue ticks as meaningful identity checks (enabling scams, impersonation and manipulation); obscured details on political ads, scams and targeted content; and obstructed independent researchers’ access to platform data. “Time to abolish the EU,” he tweeted last Saturday.
“Go to Mars. There’s no censorship of Nazi salutes there,” replied Radoslaw Sikorski, Poland’s foreign affairs minister. Yet here we are indulging a “fun” term most closely associated with a man who monetises hatred and is undoubtedly loving the elevation of “rage bait”.
Words matter, but not without context. The term’s mass exposure as OUP’s word of the year is likely to slow its gallop. It may take a while to bring it to a halt but, in the meantime, let’s go back to offline basics and call it what it is: hate speech.
