I keep seeing people call all sorts of things that absolutely should not be “rage” inducing rage bait and I’m confused how this term has evolved, what does it mean when something like a dumb question or a slightly censored meme is now “rage bait”? To me rage bait means something explicitly made to make you made, playing the devils advocate or purposefully edgy and polarizing content but that doesn’t seem to be the case anymore. To me it it feels like the way woke just means anything I don’t like, is the other side of the coin rage bait is also anything I don’t like I just don’t happen to be a conservative? Sorry if this post is rage bait, I’m genuinely asking and I have a touch of the ‘tism.
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- 2 hours
Any negative speech: especially harsh, slanderous or divisive, that provokes equally charged emotional responses.
One other thing I’d like to add: It’s not just that rage-inducing content is out there, that’s always been there. It’s that it gets rewarded by big tech, by making sure that highly responded content, gets pushed to the top.
Capitalist tech companies have an incentive to platform this content because it increases the on-site time, and their own popularity, to the detriment of their users mental health. It also helps them push pro-capitalist narratives that atomize and isolate people who should be united by a shared humanity and class status.
tbh we’re somewhat guilty of this in lemmy also, with the
Activesort allowing new comments to bump posts to the top of feeds.The only real way to fight it, is to keep an eye out for these toxic / combative threads and posters, and remove them if necessary. Since we don’t capitalist incentives to keep people on site or serve ads, it serves no benefit to keep rage-bait posters around.
Ragebait and engagement farming go hand in hand, the latter especially on the big social media platforms where the ragebaiter stands to gain monetarily with ad revenue.
It’s usually some culture war shit like “WATCH: Woman thought she could attack man and he wouldn’t fight back”. Cue tons of angry comments and arguments. And clicks. Sweet sweet engagement.
Other times it’s just obvious bad faith behaviour. Like going into a vegan community and saying “I think veganism is unhealthy and everyone should eat meat”.
- 10 hours
Cue. C-U-E. The angry comments aren’t lining up and waiting their turn. The angry comments are activated by the ragebait (like a stage cue).
- 13 hours
I consider rage bait anything that purposefully riles people up without any productive outcomes. Say, you can have a heated argument with someone because you have an interest in the topic and/or seeing other people’s points of view (even if you strongly disagree), but if your purpose is just for the sake of getting reactions, well, that’s ragebaiting.
It overlaps with trolling, but trolling is more broad- you can troll to make people confused, shocked, to mock someone in particular, etc. Trolling includes also getting people into gotcha moments, engaging in a heated argument just to be annoying to one person in particular, trolls like to see people make fools out of themselves. Ragebaiting doesn’t necessarily have that, it’s more about getting the crowd to express their annoyance at something, not necessarily your actions.
- 19 hours
- It induces rage in many people exposed to it
- That was clearly intentional
See also: trolling, clickbait
- 18 hours
Any content that was produced with the primary intent of making people angry.
Problem is that’s really hard to identify unless you know the original author’s intent. Just because it makes someone angry doesn’t necessarily mean it’s rage bait, but if it was explicitly made with that goal in mind, that’s what I would describe as rage bait.
- 16 hours
Or posting someone else’s serious-intended content to a wrong community for rage-induced engagement
- 15 hours
Rage bait. Most of my comments and contributions on social media, including Lemmy.
- 18 hours
Some terrible cooking channels on YouTube. There is no way anyone would cook like that. And they recorded it, edited and uploaded to the net.
Pure rage bait- 11 hours
I think some of those cooking channels are more fetish content than rage bait. Like where the women are cooking but still have a bunch of rings on their hands and are getting super messy with the ingredients.
But yeah, similar to rage bait. Engagement is engagement.
- 19 hours
Rage in that context doesn’t mean the full on definition, irritating or annoying are enough to qualify as the “rage” part of the term. It’s engagement bait with that as the method. The other part as someone else pointed out is the intent.
The post you allude to qualified but you were reposting it without the intent, so while the meme itself is ragebait as the original creator had the intent it only applies to you by association not directly. Most readers won’t make the distinction without knowing that’s the case.
- 16 hours
Like I saw a post with someone asking a stupid question about a fountain. I was like how is this rage inducing like, in any way to someone who called it rage bait then they said it was due to the comments, but like… that doesn’t make the post rage bait does it? How would you know the intent based off the original question/image/whatever? I understand comments are easy but I don’t get the completely generic stuff being called rage bait without context I guess?
- 19 hours
I think it’s being judged not by intent, but by the person’s own emotional response and by the amount of emotional comments. Every emotion on the internet seems so fake today, so we flag everything
- 13 hours
I think it’s being judged not by intent, but by the person’s own emotional response
People have the strangest emotional responses. Someone in a thread I posted recently said they were experiencing stress because there was a downvote on their comment.
- 18 hours
Ok whatever. Jfyi, Russian state trolls never admit they are from Russia. So I’d recommend changing this label to something like “russian douchebag”
- 16 hours
Ok so you’re part of the problem I guess? I’m asking a genuine question that’s sparked conversation, like let people ask real questions?
My comment history is perfectly normal and obviously genuine there’s nothing about me or what I post that seems “rage bait”
7 hoursBy “this one” I meant my own comment here is ragebait. It’s a joke. You guys need to lighten up. It’s only a war, you know. @[email protected]
It is genuinely alarming how easy it is to set off your issues. Could this be related to everything you know being a lie, disintegrating day by day until all you have left is heckin civility? No, the random joke I made is a plot to infiltrate your mind. Thorazine IMO.
You guys do really ask the most boring questions, though. Why are we talking about online? Ask people about the world, about their lives.
- 4 hours
Wat? I was literally just commenting on the verifiable fact that your account is set as a bot account (seriously, check your settings lmao). Don’t involve me in your schizopost.
I sincerely hope that you are able to sort out whatever mental issues are plaguing you.
Oh good the bit where you get so mad you repeat my own insults back to me. Do your intentional misunderstandings with people online give you the sensation of socialization? I can’t say I feel the same. I would rather be devoured alive by insects than care about the things you do for an hour. Find god.
- 14 hours
It’s kinda funny that the person you’re trying to convince that you’re genuine has their account labeled as a bot.
- 9 hours
I wasn’t sure what that was… that’s actually very interesting, decisive and toxic content coming from bots on MY lemmy? I guess it’s true
I don’t think rage-bait is a thing. i think the people accusing others of posting "ragebait’ are they, themselves the ones who are gaslamping us.
