Tag: perfectword

Perfect Words #2: Rage

As far as Perfect Words go, ‘Rage’ has a lot going for it. For one thing it’s short, to the point. It’s also an ideophone, one of those words that sound like what they mean – see how Sheen roars Dylan’s famous line: “Rage, rage against the dying of the light” and hear the anger, the passion.

Rage Bait: the modern rage?

Oxford University Press has made ‘Rage Bait‘ the word of the year for 2025:

“Where last year’s choice, brain rot, captured the mental drain of endless scrolling, rage bait shines a light on the content purposefully engineered to spark outrage and drive clicks.”

First of all, what a time to be alive; I wonder what this year’s word will be. Second, we see that Rage Bait is in fact described as outrage. The definition above echoes Lenny’s in Natasha Brown’s new novel Universality:

“[an] empty, angry ‘debate’ [that] achieves nothing. Nothing constructive, anyway. Or even destructive. All it results in is empty-calorie engagement. The metrics tail wagging the content dog.”

There it is: the content dog, melting our brains in corrosive content and cortisol. The Machine has watched us closely, and it has learned that outrage is the best way to keep us on a leash.

That’s why our feeds are full of triggering news that make us want to comment nasty things, and forward to our friends so they do the same. It’s not rage; it’s outrage. It’s not activism; it’s ‘engagement’- the EBITDA of the attention economy.

Outrage is both the fuel and the fumes of this new media machine, viral in the dangerous sense of the word: a textually transmitted disease for which there seems to be no cure but abstinence.

Wait – aren’t Rage and Outrage related?

As much as civil rights legend John Lewis is related to the retailer John Lewis, which is not at all.

Rage comes from the Latin ‘rabere’ which means ‘to be mad’.

Outrage comes from the Latin ‘ultra’ which means ‘beyond’. It lends itself to all sorts of extremisms, like football “ultras” and far-right “ultra-nationalists” (hence the bitter aftertaste).

This is where the etymology of ‘outrage’ is enlightening: it illustrates how ‘going beyond’ is all it’s about.

There is no end to outrage, no aim, no finality. The whole point is for each side to one-up each other into oblivion: the “empty-calorie engagement” Universality describes.

Rage is different. Potentially a destructive force, yes, but one that can be channelled into renewal – after a raging fire, nature can grow back stronger.

The case for rage

Allen Ginsberg’s famous poem ‘Howl’ is dripping with rage. It resonated with an entire generation and echoes to this day. “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked”: doesn’t that first line still slap us in the face today?

There is always an argument to be made for bitterness and despair, that it’s too late, we are already losing the best minds of our generation, with social media shortening our attention span and Generative AI shrinking our cognitive skills.

But there is a counterargument, best voiced by Maya Angelou:

“You should be angry. You must not be bitter. Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. It doesn’t do anything to the object of its displeasure. (…) So, use that anger. You write it. You paint it. You dance it. You march it. You vote it. You do everything about it. You talk it. Never stop talking it.”

This quote also captures what is at stake in differentiating between rage and outrage, and being generally picky with the words we put in our mouths, because if we are what we eat, the words we use also change us.

We are at an inflection point; much of the news this summer converges towards this realisation. The digital media landscape it has been my job to monetise for two decades has changed. If most of the public debate is going to happen online, we must decide how we want to engage with the platforms and with each other. Will we pour our time and energy into outrage, or funnel our rage into bigger ambitions, dance it, march it, vote it, talk it?

There is no good reason to let it be decided for us. Ours could still be an age of enlightenment.

Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Perfect Words #1: Arete [ἀρετή]

One of the reasons I love writing is that I get a real kick out of finding the “perfect word”: when you discuss a concept and someone sums it up into one word, with the right level of strength, even the right sounds that fit its meaning like “furious” or “awe”.

Sometimes these moments can capture meaning, like a photographer snatching a fleeting moment: how the light landed, how it made them feel.

Sometimes they can instead create meaning: when someone frames a concept for you with a new word, be it made up, borrowed from an other language, or simply unexpected.

There was such a moment earlier this week, as photographer Chris Mann and myself were discussing art over coffee, and I got to dust off the ancient Greek concept of Arete from my student years.

Specifically, we were debating the risks and rewards of dedicating time to art. The risk being financial, the reward being Arete.

‘Arete’ is a perfect word because it blends and elevates competence and gift. Its initial meaning is the “fulfilment of purpose or function”, for example a good, sharp knife fulfilling its cutting function, a pianist who took their gift and honed it with practice to become the best pianist they can be, or simply for any of us to “live well or excellently the life that we have“.

What is funny is that I had forgotten about that word but since that conversation I see Arete everywhere.

Yesterday I was taken aside by the swimming coach, as my son was not listening. I already covered in Desapego (another perfect word!) the specific agony of taking your neurodiverse kids to sports activities so will cut directly here to what happened next: instead of complaining, she asked me for tips to get his attention, went back to him and from then on he was focused and dedicated.

It was great to see him do his best but what moved me as I observed the rest of the lesson was to watch the coach work: how she showed the movements to the kids, how she stretched them and rewarded them. It was Arete: she was clearly doing what she was meant to do, with a gift perhaps, supplemented by experience, competence, excellence.

Looking back, I realised that witnessing Arete is one of my favourite things in life: when I saw my friend, composer Raphaelle Thibaut, record at Abbey Road Studios, and snapped this picture to remember how it felt to see her there, the boss in the room, years after she suddenly quit her job at Google because she just had to make music.

Even earlier this year in the middle of a session with Dina Grishin – the career coach who recently helped me – when I told her how happy I was that she had left her old job and decided to pursue coaching. It did not make me happy for her, mind you, or even for myself, who got to enjoy the fruit of her labour. It simply satisfied me tremendously to witness her do what she was obviously meant to do.

So there you go: look around you and take a little mental snapshot every time you notice Arete. Your barista who makes an excellent coffee. The notebook whose weight, texture and dimensions are just right. The teacher that all the kids in school love somehow. Yourself, as you feel in your chest that odd mix of rush and calm when you are in the flow, doing what you are meant to be doing.

In between weird nail art and outrage bait, the algorithm recently pushed me this video of Tom Waits reading Bukowski’s poem The Laughing Heart, which captures in so many words the essence of this indulgent digression, and is therefore probably the most elegant way to wrap it up.