The Atlantic

“Rage bait” is a worthy word of the year, Amogh Dimri argues: “Because the English language had previously failed to provide such an efficient term, we should be glad that the internet has come through.” https://lnkd.in/es9MEqHg “Rage bait,” both the term and the phenomenon, is a product of the attention economy, Dimri writes. According to Oxford University Press, the use of the term—defined as “online content deliberately designed to elicit anger”—has increased threefold over the past year. In endorsing this choice, “Oxford may be chasing fame, or clicks, or—yes—rage,” Dimri argues. “But it is also rightfully recognizing that language is malleable and that the latest innovations are online.” “Without the concept of rage bait, we couldn’t adequately describe why the president of the United States might be broadcasting AI-generated videos of him dumping feces on Americans who protest his policies,” Dimri argues. Nor would we be able to explain why California Governor Gavin Newsom “celebrated the Democrats’ electoral wins in November with a TikTok of him and fellow party members slamming Trump and other Republicans in a mock World Wrestling Entertainment smackdown.” The problem with hitching new words to online trends is that online trends die: Words such as “fleek” and “yeet” from the 2010s “are cringe now,” Dimri argues. But as long as we “remain governed by algorithms that promote engagement over nuance, ‘rage bait’ is likely to last as well.” Read more: https://lnkd.in/es9MEqHg 🎨: Ben Kothe / The Atlantic

Rural areas are expensive. Suburbs are expensive. Cities are absurdly expensive. Houses are unaffordable for middle-class families across America, Annie Lowrey writes. https://lnkd.in/em5XZXe9 Fifteen years ago, real-estate agents had 2.2 million vacant housing units available to show prospective buyers. That number now sits at just 732,000, despite the country having added 30 million people to its population. The Case-Shiller index of home prices sits near its highest-ever inflation-adjusted level. The U.S. does not have enough homes where people want them, a consequence of underbuilding after the Great Recession. Enter the pandemic: When COVID hit, the Federal Reserve pushed interest rates down, leading to a huge surge of home sales; then they raised interest rates to tamp down inflation. Home sales crashed, would-be buyers decided to rent, and would-be sellers decided to stay put to avoid higher mortgage rates. “Nobody’s selling, because nobody’s buying,” Lowrey writes. “Nobody’s buying, because nobody’s selling. Nobody can afford to sell. Nobody can afford to buy.” “It’s not going to be a good time to buy a house for a really long time. How long? I put that question to a few housing economists and real-estate experts. Their response? Who knows. A decade,” Lowrey continues. “What is a family looking to buy a place to do? Buy in cash, if you happen to be rich enough to do that … Buy and refinance when you can, if you happen to have the risk tolerance and financial room to do that. Buy with as large a down payment as you can muster to cut your mortgage costs. Or just rent. For the next decade. Forever.” 🎨: Matteo Giuseppe Pani. Source: Getty.

In Indiana, some conservative lawmakers are resisting Donald Trump’s pressure to redraw the state’s congressional map. Russell Berman on why the state’s Republicans are standing up to the president:

“Jollibee does not serve American food, not exactly. The chain is based in the Philippines, which developed a taste for burgers and fried chicken during its years as a U.S. colony, and has since made the foods its own.” Despite Jollibee’s off-kilter dishes such as sweet spaghetti with hot dogs and Aloha burgers with pinneapple—or perhaps because of them—Americans are eating it up. Yasmin Tayag reports from the Philippines on the chain’s ambitions to play a part in reshaping the American palate:

Many parents are teaching their children that they don’t have to hug anyone they don’t want to—but not all relatives are understanding. Rheana Murray on the new rules of family affection: https://lnkd.in/eqsJqrGn 🎨: Liana Finck

Birth rates in the United States and other wealthy countries have been trending down for nearly two decades. “In 1960, American women had, on average, 3.6 children; in 2023, the total fertility rate (the average number of children a woman expects to have in her lifetime) was 1.62, the lowest on record and well below the replacement rate of 2.1,” Christine Emba wrote in 2024. “Meanwhile, rates of childlessness are rising.” https://lnkd.in/eTQkJsr5 The conventional wisdom for reversing this trend goes that if only the government were to offer more financial support to parents, birth rates would start ticking up again. But, Emba asks, what if that wisdom is wrong? “South Korea has spent more than $200 billion over the past 16 years on policies meant to boost fertility, including monthly stipends for parents, expanded parental leave, and subsidized prenatal care—yet its total fertility rate fell by 25 percent in that time,” Emba writes. “France spends a higher percentage of its GDP on family than any other OECD member country, but last year saw its lowest number of births since World War II. Even the Nordic countries, with their long-established welfare states, child-care guarantees, and policies of extended parental leave, are experiencing sharp fertility declines.” Policy shifts that make life easier and less expensive for parents are worthwhile in their own right, but so far, such improvements haven’t changed most countries’ low fertility rates. “This suggests the existence of another, under-discussed reason people aren’t having kids—one that, I have come to believe, has little to do with policy and everything to do with a deep but unquantifiable human need. That need is for meaning,” Emba continues. “Many in the current generation of young adults don’t seem totally convinced of their own purpose or the purpose of humanity at large, let alone that of a child. It may be that for many people, absent a clear sense of meaning, the perceived challenges of having children outweigh any subsidy the government might offer.” Read more: https://lnkd.in/eTQkJsr5 🎨: Matteo Giuseppe Pani. Source: Getty

Answer today’s trivia question from Amogh Dimri’s story on why this year’s selection will probably stick around in the lexicon. Check your response and sign up for Atlantic Trivia in your inbox every day: https://lnkd.in/eCx2wdxn

As the financial ecosystem has gotten more complex, so have many kids' allowances. Michael Waters reports on one way some parents are preparing their children for an uncertain economy:

If the AI revolution fails to materialize as expected, the financial consequences could be ugly, Rogé Karma argues: “The last time the economy saw so much wealth tied up in such obscure overlapping arrangements was just before the 2008 financial crisis.”

When Olga Khazan introduced “The Big Lebowski”—her favorite movie—to her friend, she was nervous. “I was worried that she would dislike it so much that she would kind of dislike me too, through osmosis,” she writes. Jitters such as hers, it turns out, are common. https://lnkd.in/eJR7DVns “If something really matters to you,” Beverley Fehr, a University of Winnipeg psychologist, told Khazan, “there’s a vulnerability in sharing it with someone else.” When we declare a favorite book, movie, or album and introduce it to others, says Jeffrey Hall, a communications-studies professor at the University of Kansas, “what we’re doing is saying, ‘This is an aspect of my identity that I’m willingly putting out there in order for other people to know me. And if you reject this thing, you reject me.’” Our friends often like what we like. The trouble is, we usually want our friends to be even more similar to us than they actually are, Fehr told Khazan. Whether a disagreement over a beloved book or movie sparks friction in the friendship depends on how well you know the friend, what else you have in common, and how important that particular book, movie, or show is to you, Angela Bahns, a psychologist at Wellesley College, told Khazan. Read more about Khazan’s experience watching “The Big Lebowski” with her friend, and the stress of introducing something you love to someone you care about, at the link. 📸: H. Armstrong Robert / Classic Stock / Alamy