'Rage Bait' Named Oxford Word of the Year 2025 (bbc.com)
(Saturday December 06, 2025 @05:10AM (BeauHD)
from the slow-clap dept.)
- Reference: 0180303461
- News link: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/12/06/026245/rage-bait-named-oxford-word-of-the-year-2025
- Source link: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cewjxqvqzgyo
Longtime Slashdot reader [1]sinij shares a report from the BBC:
> Do you find yourself getting increasingly irate while scrolling through your social media feed? If so, you may be falling victim to rage bait, which Oxford University Press has [2]named its word or phrase of the year . It is a term that describes manipulative tactics used to drive engagement online, with usage of it increasing threefold in the last 12 months, [3]according to the dictionary publisher .
>
> Rage bait beat two other shortlisted terms -- aura farming and biohack -- to win the title. The list of words is intended to reflect some of the moods and conversations that have shaped 2025.
"Fundamental problem with social media as a system is that it exploits people's emotional thinking," comments sinij. "Cute cat videos on one end and rage bait on another end of the same spectrum. I suspect future societies will be teaching disassociation techniques in junior school."
[1] https://slashdot.org/~sinij
[2] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cewjxqvqzgyo
[3] https://corp.oup.com/news/the-oxford-word-of-the-year-2025-is-rage-bait/
> Do you find yourself getting increasingly irate while scrolling through your social media feed? If so, you may be falling victim to rage bait, which Oxford University Press has [2]named its word or phrase of the year . It is a term that describes manipulative tactics used to drive engagement online, with usage of it increasing threefold in the last 12 months, [3]according to the dictionary publisher .
>
> Rage bait beat two other shortlisted terms -- aura farming and biohack -- to win the title. The list of words is intended to reflect some of the moods and conversations that have shaped 2025.
"Fundamental problem with social media as a system is that it exploits people's emotional thinking," comments sinij. "Cute cat videos on one end and rage bait on another end of the same spectrum. I suspect future societies will be teaching disassociation techniques in junior school."
[1] https://slashdot.org/~sinij
[2] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cewjxqvqzgyo
[3] https://corp.oup.com/news/the-oxford-word-of-the-year-2025-is-rage-bait/