How “rage bait” became the word of the year we love to hate

I do not like drinking tea because as soon as I make it, it is too hot, which means I have to wait for it to cool down, and once it cools, I no longer want it. The desire simply passes. That tea will usually just sit on the table, and a few hours later the only reminder of it will be the brown stain from the cup that someone in the house has casually wiped up. I do not like emails because I cannot stand the uncertainty of a reply that could come at any moment or never arrive at all, and I will never be able to know which it will be. I do not like waiting in line because I should not be given the chance to change my mind, maybe get a headache, or realize I could have spent that time having coffee, buying flowers, or making myself tea at home that I will never drink. From what you have read above, it is easy to conclude that by all measures I am someone with a very short fuse. I cannot even recall all the moments this week that sparked something in me that could have flared into anger while I was scrolling through TikTok, nor all the voice messages that followed in the group chat, and my friends have certainly stopped counting. They have accepted their fate. The internet is a place perfectly fertile for everything stupid, meaningless, malicious, as well as for the very wise and useful information that various creators will share in their own way. And it is on us, the ones consuming that content, to react to it according to what it stirs in us.

But what do we do when the content is literally created to make us angry?

This is the case with the phrase rage bait, which Oxford University Press declared the word of 2025. Rage bait is content designed to deliberately irritate and lure you into reacting, commenting, or arguing. The point is to spark anger so that engagement increases. Now that we have established the definition, I can say with certainty that this year the only person who was not rage baited was the one whose internet was shut off for good. The whole year felt like one giant, perfectly orchestrated rage bait. I allow myself to speak about 2025 in the past tense because there is less than a month left, and I doubt December will be the month in which we reverse the already absurd and chaotic previous eleven months. It is as if someone sat down, wrote a script, set traps at every turn, and waited for all of us to collectively click exactly where we should not. And of course we did. We did not even blink.

We fell for it, but in our defense, the algorithm is a very evil, perceptive little devil that knows exactly where and when to strike.

The very existence of the term rage bait clearly shows where we are as a society. The word has become a kind of diagnosis. We are collectively on edge, as if everyone is walking around already tired, saturated, irritable, so it takes only a wrong breath before speaking for a battlefield to open in the comments. One sentence, one camera angle, one tone of voice, and suddenly you find yourself under a video in a flood of people who seem to have lost their minds. And in a way, they have. Not because they are truly bad or wish harm on anyone, at least not all of them, but because the impulse to react instantly has become stronger than any ability to pause.

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The most interesting part is that simply scrolling past something we do not like, that healthiest and most necessary option that we all once had the strength and desire to practice for our own wellbeing, is now completely gone. And even if we manage to apply that ancient skill of our ancestors, it has become unbelievably difficult to escape the grip of the internet. The algorithm will pull us back, push us forward again, irritate us a little more, because that is the job of rage bait, to set tiny traps and bombs that only later lead to a mass explosion.

As someone who has maybe twice in my life left a comment in a burst of anger, both times this year, I take it as a sign that my fiery temperament still knows some boundaries and that things are not entirely hopeless. Of course, every time it was the same, feminist topics or questions about art are the things I react to the fastest. In that regard, I clearly still have a lot to learn, and as the years go by, it seems the only option to avoid falling into the traps of rage bait will be to introduce electric shocks to the comment section to stop me in a very radical way from sinking deeper. My algorithm recognized this better than I did.

It recognized what sets me off most easily and turned it into perfect fuel for my short patience. Although that is really not difficult

This year that pushed all of us to the edge at least taught us to recognize rage bait now that there is a full definition and to refuse to fall for it. And since you will inevitably slip at some point, do not despair and know that even the strongest, and I am not talking about myself here, I am the one who cannot wait for tea to cool down, remember, have not resisted the temptations of this rage bait year. The only thing I can offer you is a strange and slightly bleak comfort, and that is that all of us in one way or another have been rage baited equally this year, and I finally feel like part of one big angry community that in 2026 can become anything at all.