If you’ve spent more than five minutes on social media lately, you’ve probably seen someone call a post “rage bait.” And honestly, the term is kind of losing its meaning.

“Literally everything is rage bait now, it doesn’t make any sense anymore,” Camila Padilla (10) said.

Originally, rage baiting was when someone intentionally posted something obnoxious or misleading to get people mad and boost their likes or views. But now people throw the word at anything they don’t agree with, an opinion, a meme, a random comment someone made at 2 a.m., anything.

Because of that, it’s getting harder to tell the difference between actual rage bait online and someone saying something you don’t like. It also shuts down conversations before they even start. Instead of talking about it, people will go, “ugh, rage bait,” and move on.

With how fast everything spreads, calling every slightly controversial post “rage bait” makes the real stuff harder to spot. Not everything is posted to make you mad, but the constant arguments make it feel like it is.

At this point, the term has worn out. Until we use it more carefully again, we’ll keep drowning in fake outrage and missing the posts we should be paying attention to.