angertainment

This word was coined by the Australian author and communications consultant, Ed Coper, as the title for his book which has the subtitle How social media outrage ruined everything. His argument is that people who wish to manipulate us have found that the way to get our attention on social media is to make us angry.  Thus we have rage bait, defined in Macquarie Dictionary as ‘content that is intended to provoke a hostile, angry reaction, often posted online and often political in nature’.  The dictionary could have added ‘and not necessarily true’.  The book Angertainment was published in May 2026 but the word angertainment seems to have climbed quickly in frequency.

Outrage is a strong emotion, justified in some cases, but in this new world of the attention economy it is being stoked and directed in manipulative ways. Increasingly we find ourselves in a community where hostility and intransigent opposition is the dominant style of communication. And we like it.  We like the feeling of sharing our outrage with others.  We come back to it again and again as a form of entertainment.