If you clicked on that headline, sorry — you’ve just been rage-baited. But that's exactly what the platforms are doing, rage-baiting us into their content. That’s why 'rage bait' didn’t just trend this year, it muscled its way to Oxford’s Word of the Year for 2025, beating out terms like 'aura farming' and 'biohack' without even breaking a sweat. Rage bait is defined 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”. Is it the same as clickbait? No. For instance, don’t read this article. It can make you angry — that would’ve been a classic clickbait headline. Tugging at curiosity, not outrage.

To und

See Full Page