A little less than two weeks after Cambridge Dictionary announced ‘Parasocial’ as its Word of the Year for 2025, Oxford University Press has announced ‘Rage Bait’ as The Oxford Word of the Year 2025. The interesting common factor among both the words is their connection to social media and its influence on the world today. 

 The term ‘parasocial’ is defined as a one-sided relationship between a fan or follower and typically a celebrity that they admire, a trend that is visible in more than one way in India. On the other hand, Oxford defines ‘rage bait’ 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 account”. 

Every person who spends time on social media today is by now acquainted with the word that has been doing the rounds of the Internet since the start of 2025, if not before that, and this is exactly why the word was selected, according to the social media account of Oxford University Press.