The Oxford University Press announced “rage bait” as the 2025 Oxford Word of the Year, beating out the other two shortlisted contenders — “aura farming” and “biohack.” All three words reflect the current digital culture, shaped by constant engagement and the increasing monetization of attention.
According to Oxford, rage bait is defined as “online content deliberately designed to elicit anger or outrage by being frustrating, provocative, or offensive,” and is “typically posted in order to increase traffic to or engagement with a particular web page or social media content.”
The term has gained traction as social media platforms have increasingly prioritized interaction over genuine connection. In short, platforms built on the values of community have, in many cases, chosen to divide their users rather than unite them.
Sometimes, social media aficionados rage bait people purely for the thrill. In 2023, Doja Cat responded to a Threads user’s post asking the Grammy winner to say “I love you” to her fans. Though she wasn’t serious, she replied with “I don’t though because I don’t know y’all.” Thus, sending her followers into a frenzy and causing several stans to deactivate their fan accounts.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, people have bought into producing rage-bait-worthy content as an accessible claim to fame. Take Winta Zesu, a New York-based influencer, who has amassed one million followers on TikTok through rage-bait content alone.
In an interview with Rolling Stone, Zesu discussed how she has leveraged this method of satire to her advantage. Online, Zesu paints herself as a model — which is true — whose biggest problem is being too pretty. She claims that most of the people who swarm her with hate comments don’t realize that she is playing a caricature of herself.
“I realized that videos really blow up when there’s like controversial things going on in the video,” Zesu said.
The growth in this type of content stems from the rise of major platforms implementing rewards programs for their users. One of the most common examples — and the platform where Zesu receives the most engagement — is the TikTok Creator Rewards program, which pays around $0.02 to $0.04 per 1,000 views.
The more a user engages with a certain type of content, whether that be through likes, comments, or shares, the more TikTok’s algorithm displays the post across others’ For You pages. When you take into consideration the amount of hate comments a typical rage bait post receives, users are only boosting the creator’s engagement further, and in turn, contributing to their overall payout.
At the time of the article’s publication, Zesu averaged $10,000 to $15,000 in revenue across platforms.
What can be passed off as satire, however, can also be polarizing. A much larger problem is at hand when monetary incentives intersect with declining media literacy. In a 2021 survey from the Canada Foundation for Innovation, it was reported that 84% of young adults were unsure if they could distinguish fact from fiction on social media. Because users are unable to understand what they are consuming, this leads to the spread of misformation, which worsens when influencers choose to cross-post content across multiple other platforms.
Because a vast majority of rage-bait content creators produce these videos with financial reasons in mind, they often fail to consider the effects their content has on different audiences. In short, the same video can be uploaded to TikTok, Instagram, X and YouTube simultaneously, reaching vastly different audiences who fail to consider the post’s original purpose or the fact that it is satirical in nature.
According to William Brady, an assistant professor of management and organization at Northwestern, people are less likely to read into misinformation if it provokes them.
“There’s a more impulsive or automatic reaction that we have when something elicits outrage in us,” Brady said. “The problem is that when people are put into an outrage state from reading political news, they will share the misinformation at a higher rate.”
An ever-evolving feed and desire to keep up with cultural shifts discourage users from verifying the truth behind the content they choose to engage with, a dynamic that has only further contributed to the decline of media literacy. For students who often rely on social media as their primary source of news, it has become increasingly more difficult for them to distinguish between credible reporting, opinion, and deliberately provocative content.
Connor Kulaiwak, a senior majoring in management and information systems, describes himself as someone who is “chronically online” and an avid social media user himself. Kulaiwak stated that he was recently rage baited in a Reddit forum after he saw a post discussing the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy.
“It was late, I probably shouldn’t have said anything, but I saw a comment that made me angry because it was just wrong, and I knew it was wrong,” Kulaiwak said. “So I left a multiple paragraph comment about why this random person was wrong, and then I went to bed.”
Kulaiwak realized after he woke up the next morning that he had fallen for the initial commenter’s trap after they had responded with a fishing rod emoji.
“If you are ‘chronically online,’ you are probably pretty good at knowing what elicits angry replies,” Kulwiak said. “With misinformation being an issue in chronically online circles, some people may end up saying things they believe are true when they are demonstrably false, which could also lead to unintended ragebaiting.”
Hence then, the article about death to media literacy the art of rage bait was published today ( ) and is available on The Crimson White ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( Death to media literacy: The art of rage bait )
Also on site :
- Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 1,428
- Thrash Metal Icon Reveals Truth About Final Album of 43-Year-Old Band
- Christina Haack Stuns in Bikini With Boyfriend on Tropical Getaway