Why do we fall for rage bait?
the 2025 word of the year
Rage bait is the 2025 word of the year
Oxford University Press just named its 2025 word of the year: rage bait (1). The institution defines the word 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.”
With the rise in popularity of “rage bait,” a cousin of sorts to the mid-2010’s “clickbait,” it’s clear that as technology evolves, so do the tactics for getting eyeballs on a page.
The President of Oxford Languages, Casper Grathwohl, further explains: “Before, the internet was focused on grabbing our attention by sparking curiosity in exchange for clicks, but now we’ve seen a dramatic shift to it hijacking and influencing our emotions, and how we respond.”
We’re wired for negativity bias
Grathwohl makes a compelling point about content engineered for “hijacking and influencing our emotions,” because neuroscience research shows that negative stimuli elicit more brain activity than positive or neutral ones (2).
Also known as “negativity bias,” humans have a built-in tendency to pay more attention to negative events. This feature serves a purpose, though. From an evolutionary perspective, stickier, more resonant negative memories could be life-saving (3). For example, if we eat a certain type of berry that makes us sick, then it would be beneficial to remember to avoid those berries in the future.
Given this bias, it’s not too surprising that media leans more towards bad news. Rage baiting is perhaps the 21st century response to the golden journalism adage: “if it bleeds, it leads.” People find sensationalized negative news more entrancing and stimulating (4). Thus, they’re likelier to keep engaging.
How to cope
We fall for rage bait because we’re wired to do so. But, that doesn’t mean that we are entirely defenseless.
When it comes to our thoughts, the first step in battling the negativity bias is to notice when we’re having negative thoughts. Once we catch them, we don’t need to judge ourselves for their appearance because we know that it’s normal and expected. Instead, we can find a positive thought to counterbalance the negativity.
On the technology side of things, for those of us who are on social media, it’s important to stay aware of how we are engaging with different posts. Regardless of the platform, the algorithm will track what types of content that we engage the most with, whether it’s time spent on the page, likes or comments, and then feed us similar posts. So, if we keep watching rage bait content, it will inevitability show us more of that. In order to escape rage bait land, we must change our content consuming habits.
Don’t get baited
The 2024 word of the year was “brain rot.” This year, “rage bait” beat out “aura farming” and “biohack” to win word of the year. Evidently, media and technology remain at the forefront of the zeitgeist, but our relationship with the two is as toxic as ever. As we continue to intertwine our lives with the internet, we must continue to stay aware of the ways we interact with it to avoid falling victim again and again.
