The Case Against Oxford Word Of The Year Rage Bait

It is perversely fitting that, as 2025 limps to its close, the past twenty-four hours have been devoted to celebrating the Oxford Word of the Year: rage bait. Yet in our eager appropriation of linguistic novelty, one has to wonder whether we have grown so anesthetized to consequence that we can turn a blind eye to the quiet, corrosive havoc this word wrought over the past year.

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Rage bait is, at its core, content deliberately engineered to provoke irritation, outrage, or moral indignation. Unlike the accidental annoyances of earlier internet eras, it is purposeful: a provocation calculated to exploit human attention and emotion. And we all know how stretched attention spans are these days.

A headline, a comment, a miscaptioned image...nothing is accidental, everything is designed to pull at the nerves, to elicit a reaction, to keep eyes glued to the screen.

The rise of rage bait is where technology and human psychology collide. Algorithms reward engagement over reflection, amplifying content that triggers immediate emotional responses. In India, where social networks are ubiquitous and deeply entwined with identity, the consequences spill beyond the digital: small disagreements erupt into communal feuds, misleading posts provoke protests, and ordinary users, often oblivious to the orchestration behind the posts, become instruments in campaigns of emotional manipulation. It is a cycle that deepens social fissures and leaves a population quietly fatigued.

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And yet, here we are, marvelling that rage bait won the Oxford University Press’s Word of the Year. According to OUP, that declared brainrot word of the year for 2024, mentions of the phrase have grown more than threefold in the past year. Casper Grathwohl, president of Oxford Languages, frames this as a sign of our growing awareness of digital manipulation. But recognition does not equal remedy. The word may be celebrated, but the phenomenon it describes continues to distort discourse, erode empathy, and incentivise anger over reflection which are consequences that linger at the periphery of our collective vision.

Rage baiting is not confined to social media feeds. It has infiltrated human interactions: casually, knowingly, sometimes almost playfully, but always strategically. In this sense, rage bait is not merely a linguistic phenomenon but a social one really, a commentary on how attention, emotion, and influence are commodified in a hyperconnected world.

It is ironic, then, that so much attention has been devoted to celebrating the word itself rather than interrogating its cost. For Gen Z, it may have become a trivial addition to everyday vocabulary, a shrug of familiarity. But rage bait is far from trivial. It is a mirror reflecting the anxieties, fissures, and vulnerabilities of a society increasingly organized around emotion, virality, and distraction.

And it rarely exists in isolation. Rage bait is often entangled with misinformation, doctored images, and exaggerated claims, carefully engineered to provoke overreaction. The consequences are tangible: protests flare, harassment campaigns spread, public panic erupts ; all fueled less by reality than by orchestrated outrage. Users, largely unaware of the choreography behind these posts, become unwitting participants in a social experiment they did not consent to: a mass manipulation of emotion masquerading as entertainment, news, or casual scrolling.

So, while Rage bait may be the Oxford word of the year, the accolade risks obscuring more than it illuminates.