Rage Bait: Content Designed to Provoke Anger and Frustration to Drive Engagement

A clip of a woman pouring out all the foundation from a bottle and applying it all over her face at once.

A video of someone eating food while still wrapped in plastic packaging.

Or a clip showing a person pouring a large bottle of syrup into a small glass, spilling it messily and wasting the contents.

Clearly, these clips show behavior unlikely to be part of anyone’s daily routine. Viewers find them increasingly irritating the more they watch. Yet, why do such videos flood online platforms worldwide? Even though some viewers leave warning comments, these clips keep appearing persistently on social media.

These phenomena are defined as 'Rage Bait'—content intentionally designed to provoke anger and irritation, compelling people to interact with it through a negative emotional response.

Simon Copeland, an honorary researcher at the Australian National University specializing in online extremism research, says that anger bait ranges from trivial matters to extreme cases, including misinformation, distortion, as well as racist and sexist content.

The motivations behind creating anger-provoking content vary but generally fall into two categories: generating money and shaping beliefs. Copeland says platforms today encourage creators to produce content that attracts user engagement, with those accounts then receiving compensation from the platforms.

Therefore, regardless of the content, if people click, watch, like, comment, save for later, or share it, they all help promote that post, resulting in rewards from social media platforms.

"Attention is the most important currency on social media," said Theodore Matthew, senior digital media lecturer at the University of Sydney. He explained that besides benefiting users, platforms themselves profit from anger-provoking content because it keeps people engaged longer, which boosts advertising revenue.

"You are caught in this vicious cycle," Theodore Matthew said.

This year, Oxford University Press also named Rage Bait as their Word of the Year, beating out terms like Aura farming (meaning a natural, effortless charm and attractiveness perceived without needing to be stated) and BioHack (meaning the improvement of body and mind through science, technology, or experimentation to enhance performance).

"The existence and rising use of the term rage bait means we are becoming more aware of deceptive tactics used to lure people online," said Casper Grathwohl, president of Oxford Languages.

References:abc.net.au,bbc.com