Can Reading the Daily Sceptic Make You Go Mad? Some “Experts” Think So
The term “rage-bait” may sound like a form of angry onanism, but it is in fact the official new Word of the Year 2025, as decided by the compilers of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). The lexicographers say it was voted for by you, the great British public, but closer inspection reveals OED “experts” chose the initial shortlist to be voted for in the first place, before gauging “the sentiment of public commentary”, and then merely taking the number of ballots cast into partial account, which is much like how the Labour Party intend to run the next General Election too.
What is rage-bait? It is online content (perhaps like this very article) which aims to hook you into clicking on it by virtue of beginning with an outrageous-sounding headline designed to make you go positively purple with fury, like Barney the Dinosaur on PCP. Why did the OED – sorry, I mean you, the polis at large – vote rage-bait as Word of the Year 2025? The OED press release explained:
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Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
As always, they accuse you of exactly what they themselves are guilty of.
They don’t like it up’em.
Classic projection!
Very common, as demonstrated routinely in this little microcosm of the Internet. For instance: the free speech frauds. Strangely all one way when it comes to tolerance. They expect to say whatever they like but woe betide anyone who might offer up a counter-argument or opinion they don’t like. Perhaps they should familiarise themselves with the term ‘reciprocation’ before demonstrating their overt double-standards.
It could be that many people have a general lack of self-awareness and therefore don’t appreciate it when you hold a mirror up to their behaviour. I call them the “rules for thee but not for me brigade”.😉
Except on here, Mogs, nobody is actually punching anyone. It’s only words, exactly as it should be. And here, being wrong is not a crime – it’s progress; the scientific method in action. We help each other, I believe people know when they’ve lost the argument, what should set sceptics apart from the rest is that we should be able to admit it, gracefully, and gratefully.
At least, that’s the theory 😜
“We help each other, I believe people know when they’ve lost the argument, what should set sceptics apart from the rest is that we should be able to admit it, gracefully, and gratefully.” 🤣😂
I needed a laugh, cheers. Do you read posts with your eyes shut?👀 10/10 for naivety, though. Meanwhile, in the real world…..
…should….
To complement your observation here is an interesting perspective on the differences between Liberals and Conservatives in the US.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/p4nGt9X4NzE
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😄💯 True. The overreaching, overbearing Libtards. That’s why it irks me when people don’t just stay in their own lane. If another grown-ass adult wants to choose a different path then who is anyone else to sit in judgement and say that they’re wrong for making different life-changing decisions to them? None of anyone’s damn business. But that’s something else I’ve seen demonstrated on here, which is why I don’t play divisive ‘Left vs Right’ anymore. We’re made up of individuals, after all, and that fact should be remembered by some of these “my way or the highway” peeps.
Can the original poster or any of the 5 uptickers give examples of posts and posters here who advocate censorship on this platform, or blocking of posts or posters? I don’t recall anyone taking that position – all I have ever seen is people disagreeing with each other. Sometimes that is done constructively and politely, other times the arguments seem weak/non-existent and there are ad hominem attacks – but that’s not the same as opposing free speech.
I’ve not seem any abuse on this site except once. Someone called me an idiot in a one word reply, which I of course flagged and got removed. That is pure abuse and I make no apologies, in some ways I wish I had not flagged it because it would have shown the writer up for what he is, however that’s a debatable point. But I don’t know if other posts have been removed. There is a lot of reasoned and sometimes not so reasoned arguments but that is ok and should be encouraged. So I would be interested to know. MODERATOR HERE The guiding principles appear at the beginning of each Comments section: “Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban” Calling someone an idiot is clearly an abuse. Excessive profanity is edited; this site is for all ages. A comment that might be libellous will be edited. We occasionally edit or even remove comments which could be quoted out of context in, say, the MSM, and used by them to paint us as ‘right wing nut jobs’, (although this concern is diminishing). Remarks in very poor taste might get edited. But you won’t… Read more »
I have seen a few cases of posts that are solely personal name calling and nothing else. I am not especially bothered whether those get left or removed, though I would not personally go to the effort of flagging them. They are disappointing and waste space but tell you something about the poster. I guess repeated trolling of the same person by the same person would be something that could usefully be removed, though a better approach IMO is to provide us with the ability to disable notifications of posts by a specific person, for whatever reason – maybe you just never find what they say worth reading. I know that feature exists on other platforms. Probably more applicable on forums where there are high volumes of posts, so sadly not here. I think some posts have been removed for excessive bad langauge, possibly also links on sensitive topics – not 100% sure. It has never happened to me but has happened to others. There was one incident where all the comments on an article disappeared – something to do with Kate Middleton I think. We never learned why. Guess they have their reasons. Generally I think it’s anything goes… Read more »
They have replayed the clip of Two Tier in the White House with the Great Donald where his government’s attitude to free speech was questioned. Our robotic moron blathered on about his support for free speech while his actions do the opposite, but it is worth focussing on Donald’s expression. It has ‘he is lying’ written all over it.
Mental health was used by the Nazis and communists as a way of curbing dissent, in some cases people who were mentally disturbed were executed which is bad enough but then they used it to silence whoever disagreed with them. So the fact that this methodology is being touted is paradoxically so disturbing it could actually cause a melt down, a kind of extreme cognitive dissonance. Couple this with censorship which can earmark certain individuals for “treatment” is quite sinister. We have to face up to the fact that we are living under a tyranny.
i suggest that people or organisations being targeted by these dreadful people should henceforth be called dissenters, this will evoke in the minds of the reader the dreadful consequences of past dictatorial governments. In short we need to use triggers just like the present tyrants do in their use of words like racist etc.
Excellent point – “dissenter” is an effective and appropriate word.
I’m not sure about methods employed by the ruling elite in the post-1945 communist states but the Nazis didn’t bother with making up elaborate justifications for getting rid of people who opposed them, they just killed them and often, in pretty gruesome ways. You have to realize that all prominent NSDAP leaders were German soldiers during WWI and had experienced the mass slaughter of defensive warfare from 1914¹ – 1917 and because of this, didn’t value the lifes of enemies or what other people might think about how they treated them at all.
¹ Hitler became a volunteer in the Bavarian army in summer 1914 which meant he became part of the so-called reserve corps created by Erich v. Falkenhayn from the masses of volunteers which saw their first action in the 1914 battle of Ypres when poorly trained German volunteer soldiers tried to overwhelm the professionals from the British Expeditionary Force with their storming bayonett charges. The obvious outcome was a bloodbath which only ended when the Germans had exhausted themselves without accomplishing anything more noteworty than gaining control of a few ruined villages.
My wife and I have a young gay couple as close friends, they are rabidly left wing and think communism needs another good old college try….
Their entire knowledge base is social media recycling of some of the most absurd possible realities which are the exact opposite to what is actually happening.
They think Farage will imprison them and have an “escape plan” they think the right will bring authoritarianism, when I point out the our country now imprisons more people for thought crime then any other on earth, and that we are monitored at all times. Finally they think capitalism is ruining he country, I point out the government controls everything you are allowed to buy and even what media you are permitted to consume.
I despair as they where products of lockdown universities and state education.
Yes, along with all the usual forces, there is a new force at play – social media, which effectively serves every individual their own, automatically curated echo chamber.
Interesting times. Bring on the next Carrington Event, that might help to jerk people out of this particular slumber.
Close friends….? If your worldview(s) are so totally different and they seemingly have no contact with reality, it must be hard work to maintain this friendship.
Friendships often work when you automatically find that you are on a similar wavelength. It’s so tiring having to counter every issue (or else having to bite your tongue).
I think the main problem is that younger people have no basis for comparison because they don’t remember a time in living memory when things were ‘normal’ ( read: pre-woke or any bullshit government-pushed agenda ). Then factor in the pre-internet days or when education ( particularly universities ) wasn’t a hotbed of Leftie Marxist indoctrination, then you can see how the younger peeps are falling victim to this in greater numbers. I don’t want to say they’re doomed but they’re certainly swimming against the tide when it comes to being force-fed and brainwashed with the various narratives and ideologies doing the rounds.
“They think Farage will imprison them”. Are they able to explain why Trump has not yet imprisoned gays?
I’m surprised that you describe them as ‘close friends’. They are clearly unhinged and I would stay away from them as they will eventually drag you down with their relentless nonsense.
Surely, “sought after’ is a tautology; shouldn’t it be just “sought”? And these are the language experts!
What do our elections, the word of the year and news pre social media all have in common?
I think they are getting excited over nothing. ‘Rage bait’ is just a type of clickbait, its aim is to generate clicks, likes, advertising revenue, etc., not foment uprisings. It’s nothing new (apart from the ‘click’ element) and there’s nothing surprising about it. I doubt ‘apathy bait’ will be word of the year any time soon (anyway I think the word for that is ‘Strictly’).
Communist Soviet Union would delegitimize anyone that disagreed with the system by declaring them insane.
I cannot get the image of “people running” to load, even using another browser; I get
“A group of people running in a large crowd
AI-generated content may be incorrect.”
Am I being subject to censored content, or is it a simple error?
I can’t see an image there, either.
Thanks, not sure why that didn’t load, it has now been fixed!
Another cheerfully irreverent article by Steven Tucker that really made me laugh! 🙂
I know why they are called words of the year – because they don’t last any longer than that.
The OUP appears to be run by an American.
“Grathwohl has been man and boy at OUP. The Michigan native studied art history at the amazingly named Kalamazoo College and classical languages at the American University, Cairo before joining OUP in 1996 after brief stints at the Princeton and Columbia university presses.” h/t The Bookseller
The woke term for different opinion is mental illness. See also homophobia, transphobia, islamophobia etc. Dissent is pathologized to deligitimize it and to justify taking action against the dissenters which aren’t people who disagree for perfectly rational reason but who are really insane and need to be controlled lest they harm others.
To state the blindingly obvious, no white middle aged men or women of the ‘far right’ or as most would say, ‘just right’, have caused one bit of harm to the general populace. No suicide bombers, no bombs left on tube trains or buses, no planes flown into massive sky scrapers, just words of anger, disappointment, disbelief at a succession of our governments which seem hell bent on crushing us underfoot.