Everything is rage bait
What does it feel like to exist on an internet in which everyone wants you to be mad at them?
Embedded is your essential guide to what’s good on the internet, written by Kate Lindsay and edited by Nick Catucci.
and another thing: im not mad. please dont put in the newspaper that i got mad. —Kate
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There are several strategies for getting attention online. In the early years, things went viral simply for being notably funny (David After Dentist), heartwarming (children being good at singing), or perplexing (The Dress). Except for some obvious exceptions, going viral was all in good fun.
In the margins, however, another kind of virality was growing, though even that started out harmless. Falling down compilations gave way to prank videos gave way to viral stunts that started discourse. The content toed the line between cheeky and exploitative, and that’s often what was thrilling about it. But as the mechanics of attention shifted on the internet, the ante had to be endlessly upped to keep us engaged. People, brands, and artists went to increasingly elaborate lengths to break through the noise. We can no longer be wowed, charmed, or inspired by just anything if we’re going to pause scrolling. We have to be enraged.
“Rage bait” is a cousin of “clickbait,” and is a manipulative tactic of increasing internet traffic by specifically stoking annoyance or backlash. The word has existed since at least 2009, but has been more openly discussed and diagnosed in the 2020s, especially in this political environment. President Trump, for example, uses it as a distraction tactic, coming out with outlandish decrees about stripping Rosie O'Donnell of her citizenship so we’ll all get angry about that instead of the real things that are happening.
Politicians have been manipulating anger and fear for decades to sway voters, but only recently has it also become the go-to tactic for culture. In an internet as crowded as this one, “all press is good press” has never been more true. With that in mind, spending seven fucking days arguing about Sydney Sweeney isn’t just pointless. It’s complicit.
I don’t know if American Eagle actually sat down and said “let’s put a right-wing dog whistle in our advertisement.” I find it hard to believe Sweeney was instructed to speak the script like the popular girl in high school taking her turn during popcorn-reading. But it certainly didn’t hurt, because the advertisement has 3 million views on YouTube, and it makes no difference to American Eagle how many people were angry while viewing it.
It’s exhausting not just because I’d love to stop seeing headlines about this, but also because every other headline is probably about something that is also rage bait.
Jessie Murph, a 20-year-old singer, recently released a song called “1965” that contains lyrics like “I think I'd give up a few rights / If you would just love me / Like it's 1965” and “I might get a little slap-slap, but you wouldn't hit me on Snapchat.” She then performed this on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon in a Priscilla Presley-esque getup.
Murph claims the controversial lyrics are “satire.” Whether or not you believe her doesn’t matter, because the backlash they elicited is effective marketing. The outraged tweets, TikToks, and thinkpieces are the billboards, pointing everyone towards a song whose music video now has over eight million views.
This isn’t to say that rage bait only affects people with progressive values. We just witnessed the ultimate conservative rage bait in the form of South Park’s episode mocking Donald Trump as overweight and underendowed. Few others of his station would dignify this with a response. For Trump, however, it was designed to hit very predictable, childish triggers. There’s no level he won’t stoop to, so they tried to see just how low he would go. Not only did it succeed in that goal (The White House issued a response), but the episode also received almost six million views, breaking a 26-year-old record. Rage bait works in both directions.
At least, it does on the main stage. These are examples of big, monocultural moments. But rage bait is so commonplace within internet culture, it might actually be passé.
“Back in the good days, when rage bait was niche and it didn’t have a term, it used to be so easy to rage bait people,” creator Vexbolts said in a video. “But now it is detectable.” As always, brands getting in on rage bait killed the joke. Now those who do it for the love of the game have to resort to less obvious, more niche forms:
What does it feel like to exist on an internet in which everyone wants you to be mad at them? It’s loud. It’s annoying. It is understandably disheartening. But it also can’t last forever.
If everything is rage bait, then nothing is. What’s more, the anger doesn’t go anywhere or solve anything. We’ll start to learn that the reaction is pointless and become fatigued with the provocations. It will, as it already is in more marginal internet spaces, become detectable. We might be angry, but we’re not (always) stupid.
Thank you for featuring my note! And writing this - I wrote a follow-on myself last week https://nikitawalia.substack.com/p/rage-is-the-machine
perfectly said! the blatant manipulation to feed the attention maw is blatant and overwhelming