What is “rage bait”, phrase of the 12 months 2025? | EUROtoday
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Oxford college press by no means chooses its “word of the year” at random. By devoting the expression “rage bait” to 2025, the world’s largest college publishing home isn’t just describing a linguistic vogue: it’s highlighting a collective consciousness. That anger is not simply an emotion that seems spontaneously amongst Internet customers however that it’s typically intentionally manufactured by net content material creators.
“Rage bait” comes from the English phrases “bait”, which implies “bait”, and “rage”, which implies “anger”. The expression, which may due to this fact be translated, for instance, as “anger catalyst”, refers to on-line content material designed to arouse indignation with a really particular goal: to seize consideration, generate site visitors, increase engagement. Outrageous remarks, synthetic controversies… After the period of the “click whore”, these sensational titles designed to impress curiosity, right here has come the time of the trend entice: it’s not our need to know that we’re exploiting, however our reflex to be indignant.
Oxford linguists present that using the time period has tripled in a single 12 months. It emerged at a time of rising consciousness of the injury digital expertise has on psychological well being. “Rage bait” was born in 2002 to explain the way in which of intentionally frightening an aggressive response in a motorist. Then it migrated to social networks to designate viral tweets, earlier than getting into the widespread vocabulary of content material creators.
The rage farming technique
Behind this phrase, there’s a system. The algorithms of main platforms reward what provokes a robust response: a easy like is much less remunerative than an outraged share, or a flood of outraged feedback. From this comes an actual technique that the English already name “rage farming”: sowing, day after day, polarizing content material, typically deceptive, to develop an viewers harvest.
The selection of “rage bait” follows, notice Oxford officers, that of “brain rot” in 2024, an expression describing the sensation of psychological decrepitude linked to the infinite scrolling of content material. Together, the 2 phrases inform the identical story: that of platforms which not simply seize our consideration, however which form our feelings, our public debates, and even our mind-set.
We may see it as simply one other Anglicism. That can be a mistake. Because what we name “rage bait” has no geographical boundaries. Fabricated controversies exist abundantly on the French-speaking Web.
The query now could be whether or not we are going to proceed to fall into the entice of “rage bait” by reacting to every thing, or whether or not we will oppose this financial system of anger.
https://www.lepoint.fr/societe/qu-est-ce-que-le-rage-bait-mot-de-l-annee-2025–08-12-2025-2604997_23.php