In 2025, the expression “rage bait” was selected as Oxford Dictionary’s Word of the Year. Shorthand for the strategy used by content creators to capture our attention by intentionally posting inflammatory content, “rage bait” has become a key strategy of those in power seeking to sow distraction and fear by promoting conspiracies, spreading misinformation, and scapegoating minorities. 

This course will use the phenomenon of online “rage bait” to understand our embodied experiences both on the internet and in everyday life. We’ll contemplate rage as both essential to our humanness and the thing that is killing us, drawing from thinkers like Audre Lorde, Zeynep Tufecki, Omar El-Akkad, adrienne marie brown, Mohammed El-Kurd, and Jenny Odell. 

We will ask: How can we metabolize rage, and hone our capacity for action, rather than enriching tech companies with our hate-watches, rage comments, and clicks? How can we create survival strategies for an era where digital outrage coincides with, and sometimes overshadows, other forms of relating to one another? What countercultural possibilities and visions for digital citizenship emerge when we refuse to fall for the rage bait that tells us “this is all there can be”?

Led by Malavika Kannan, Gen Z writer and author of the forthcoming novel UNPRECEDENTED TIMES.

Tuesdays, 6:30-9:00pm
June 30th- July 14th

55 Washington St. in DUMBO