To mark the impact of the term, Oxford University Press chose “rage bait” as its official 2025 “Word of the Year”. But how can we define it? According to the same publishing house, the term refers to “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”, as the two words composing the expression show.

Even though it is very simple in its structure, the rage bait phenomenon has significant consequences, since emotions triggered by extreme, reaction-driven content increase the perception of urgency and reduce individuals’ ability to rationally analyze and evaluate the information in front of them. Rage bait is, indeed, guided by a single logic: react. However, this reaction involves mainly negative emotions, such as anger, fear and indignation, which are faster and more intense, and can also be explained through human biological characteristics. When engaging with content perceived as unjust or threatening, the “negative bias” materializes. The expression refers to a situation in which certain areas of the brain become active, in order to signal what could be perceived by individuals as a threat to themselves or to the group they belong to. At the same time, the “social reward mechanism”, which occurs when many people share one’s anger or indignation, is responsible for releasing dopamine, which is linked to pleasure and motivation. This process gives birth to indignation waves increasing with time.

In today’s digitalized world, this mechanism is becoming increasingly valuable for digital platforms, which benefit from highly emotional online content, as it generates more interactions than neutral information. Some studies have indeed found that online posts generating strong emotions spread six times faster than others. This vicious circle is fed by platforms through algorithms, which privilege content generating engagement, creating a loop through a process called “emotional contagion”: the more an individual is exposed to negative content, the more he or she will be pushed to share similar content.

The consequences stemming from this phenomenon should not be underestimated. For example, rage bating risks to influence not only one’s emotional mood, but also the way he or she interprets news and others’ intentions, leading to a situation in which people get used to conflict and personal attacks and come to consider them to be a normal condition in public discourse, making personal opinion stronger and debate weaker. If not addressed, this might weaken the democratic foundations of our societies, reducing mutual trust and the ability to engage in dialogue, key elements of a democracy.