"Rage bait" is Oxford University Press’ word of the year.
On Monday, the academic publisher announced the winning word for 2025, defining it as “online content deliberately designed to elicit anger or outrage by being frustrating, provocative, or offensive, typically posted in order to increase traffic to or engagement with a particular web page or social media content.”
Oxford selected the word after three days of voting, during which over 30,000 people chose among the three shortlisted words: "rage bait," "aura farming," and "biohack."
Oxford found that the phrase was first used on Usenet in 2002, to describe a specific reaction from a driver after being flashed by another driver who is attempting to pass them. At that time, the word still meant the act of eliciting a “deliberate agitation,” per the publisher, but the meaning has since shifted to a colloquialism—a slang word used as a descriptor for viral tweets and to criticize “entire networks of content that determine what is posted online, like platforms, creators, and trends.”
According to Oxford, in 2025, the usage of "rage bait' tripled, with rage bait evolving to “signal a deeper shift in how we talk about attention—both how it is given and how it is sought after—engagement, and ethics online.”
Last year’s word of the year was brain rot, while rizz was 2023’s word of the year, and goblin mode was 2022’s winner.