'Rage-bait' is a revealing word of the year for 2025

Our communication culture is in crisis; it has confused attention with influence, clicks with credibility and noise with leadership

Just look around you and you will see rage and outrage everywhere on the socials. 

Outrage might trend, but integrity makes history.

Counting down to the end of the year and like every year, a word emerges that doesn’t just describe language, it describes the behaviour of an entire era. 

This year, that word is “rage-bait”. It is the perfect term for a time when emotional manipulation has replaced thoughtful communication, and provocation is treated as a political strategy. Just look around you and you will see rage and outrage everywhere on the socials. 

There was plenty of rage and outrage from all sides about the suggestion to rename a tiny park in Dublin. We all recognise it instantly. The headline crafted not to inform but to antagonise us. The social media post worded just so, knowing it would divide rather than enlighten. 

There was plenty of rage and outrage from all sides about the suggestion to rename a tiny park in Dublin. Picture: Reuters/Clodagh Kilcoyne

The clip very well edited to trigger maximum outrage rather than spark understanding. Rage-bait is not an accident, it’s a tactic used by many running campaigns and is seen regularly in geopolitics as well as here at home. It has quickly become the modern political equivalent of banging an empty pot in a public square and shouting: “Look at me!” 

And nowhere is this more glaring than in the behaviour of some lightweight politicians. You know the type: thin on policy, low on substance, but loud enough to make noise about a topic of the day. For them, rage-bait is oxygen. 

When some political folks lack vision, nuance, or experience, outrage becomes the shortcut to relevance. They can’t build trust, so they manufacture reaction. They can’t win an argument, so they escalate emotion. The goal is not leadership, it’s attention.

The social media platforms, of course, reward this behaviour. Then the very clever algorithms swoop in, crank everything up to eleven degrees and, some might say, mint money for the social platforms and the influencers stoking and amplifying the fire for their sole benefit. 

So we are well-trapped in this grim little carousel where outrage fuels profit, profit fuels total panic with lots of outrage, and the rest of us wander around simmering with irritation from dawn till dusk. Cheerful, isn’t it, and we all know what it is like. And, of course, it captures the very zeitgeist of this time.

'Aura farming'

Just look at another popular word to survive in this year-end round-up — “aura farming,” another lovely gem of a word on the mighty list. Mention “aura” to anyone under 20 and they will howl laughing at you, but only after they’ve spent half the day meticulously curating theirs online. 

Because that’s what it is, it is a new religion, it is the high church of authenticity, except the authenticity is choreographed, filtered and served at precisely the right angle for total freshness. If someone has the poor misfortune to fall, slips on a curb and a camera catches it, boom, it is negative aura.

Paul Allen: 'Rage-bait... exposes our communication culture in crisis, one that has confused attention with influence, clicks with credibility and noise with leadership.'

If you’re snapped doing something vaguely impressive, suddenly you’ve got 1,000+ aura points like you’re a brave character in a badly written video game. This is what it has come to, a generation grading human moments like they are modern-day stock prices. 

“Aura farming” isn’t a trend; it’s industrial-scale self-curation. It is the relentless polishing of every corner of your life to convince strangers that you’ve got rizz, that much-hyped, much-overrated sparkle that apparently now substitutes for personality. And the worst part? We all know the game is total nonsense… but we keep playing it anyway.

But despite all this noise, something interesting is happening. People are getting tired. There is a growing awareness, a kind of political and social immune system that recognises manipulation when it appears. 

We have found an audience is beginning to crave calm over chaos, substance over spectacle, and clarity over confrontation. For every manufactured outrage, there is now a quiet question forming: is someone trying to wind me up? Yes, is the answer. 

Rage-bait may be the word, or two words, of the year, but perhaps its significance lies in what it reveals rather than what it celebrates. It exposes our communication culture in crisis, one that has confused attention with influence, clicks with credibility and noise with leadership. 

The truth is simple: outrage may attract, but it does not endure. We remember leaders who guide, not ones who provoke. We follow those who speak to our intelligence, not our anger. And we trust those who tell the truth, even when it’s dull, rather than those who perform fury because it plays well online. 

So yes, rage-bait sums up the 2025 year. But with any luck, it will also become a cautionary marker, a sign of how cheap communication can become when we allow algorithms and insecurity to take the microphone.

• Paul Allen is managing director of PR firm Paul Allen & Associates